


Doors, Paths, and the End of the World

by VictoriaSkyeMarsters



Category: Die Tür | The Door (2009), Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Extended Universe - Fandom, The Path (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universes, Anal Sex, Comfort, Coming Untouched, David doesn't really wear shirts, Eventual Smut, Fingering, Hannibal Extended Universe, He just needs love, Homelessness, Hugh Dancy's face inspires the masses, I don't care what anyone says, I love Cal Roberts, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Pining, Rare Pairings, UST, What else is new?, Will add more tags as I go, angsty painting, bottom!David, followed swiftly by RST, handjobs, hannigram AU, murder in the name of love, showering, slowish burn, they sweat a lot, top!Cal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 01:48:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8231888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriaSkyeMarsters/pseuds/VictoriaSkyeMarsters
Summary: After losing everything, including the only way back to his own world, David flees to New York City, where homelessness, a blizzard, and the help of a friendly neighborhood cult, brings him face to face with Cal Roberts.





	1. Rung One

It’s not a hard decision to make, letting go of Maja’s hand at the poolside. David’s fingers leave bloody prints behind on the surface of her skin, and he shuts his eyes to the mar, and he shuts his eyes to her, and he turns away forever. 

It’s not a hard decision to make, leaving. He walks, stumbles, a quick stagger, off the main road, the pistol clutched in his hand, just in case. Because it can’t be that easy to get away. He knows the tunnel collapse will not be the end of it. The death of one enemy only breeds new threats. David’s eyes dart about the thicket of trees, and there, on the road, obfuscated by dying limbs and his own haze of tears, he sees them, his treacherous neighbors walking down the street, heads twisting every direction, searching him out, hunting him down. He swallows, and the heavy feeling in his stomach aches and churns. 

Before too long, when he is so deep into the woods he can no longer make out the houses, he hears the gunshot. Instinct warns him to move faster. It tells him the bullet was for Maja. He can see her in his head, too sad to move from the pool. Too broken to run when they find her. David feels broken, too, and he vaguely wonders how it is his feet are still working beneath him, fleeing him, step by step, away from the ones who would grant him peace.

He trips on a malevolent root, and crashes to his knees. This could be it, he thinks. It would be as easy as staying put, exactly as he is, and waiting. They would find him eventually, and then his body could be broken along with the rest of him. David grimaces and a horrible sound escapes, like something dying, but he grits his teeth and braces a palm against the trunk of a tree, and he pulls himself up. He doesn’t want to die this way, and so he keeps going, one tired step at a time. 

 

It’s dark when he reaches the far end of the wood and emerges tentatively onto a new road, miles and miles from his own neighborhood. His muscles ache, and when he frowns at the flickering lamp post, he feels the dried blood on his face stretching the skin over his nose, down his cheeks, across his chin. A few cars whiz by, and he steps back into the shadows of the tree line, afraid. They must be searching for him. They wouldn’t give up so easily. He isn’t safe. Not yet. Not ever. Not while he’s in Germany. Not while he’s on this continent. Not, he thinks helplessly, while he’s in this world that is so, so wrong. 

He decides, as the car pulls up beside him, that he will ask for a ride to the airport. The man is friendly, mustached, and older, with a shotgun leaned in the backseat. David can overpower him easily if he needs to, if he turns out to be something more than a kind stranger, and so he accepts when the passenger door unlocks for his use. His fingers dig into his kneecaps anxiously as he sits, denim bunching up beneath his nails, and he’s aware of his own gun hanging heavy in the waistband of his blue jeans. He’s surprised when the man asks him no questions about his appearance, especially when he catches a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. David looks, appropriately, as if he’s just barely escaped with his life. The cuts on his face aren’t bleeding anymore, but they’re grossly clotted and swollen. His hands are covered and crusted with dried blood. He picks at his knuckles and rust-hued flakes fall away from his skin. 

He has a hard time sitting still until the driver offers him a cigarette, gesturing towards the glove compartment over David’s knees. Smoking keeps his hands busy, but he can’t help but keep his eyes in constant motion, looking behind and sideways and forward, waiting, expecting.

When they arrive at the airport, he can’t believe it. He reaches into his pocket, digging out his wallet, and offers to pay the man for the ride, but the old man waves him off, lets him keep the rest of the cigarettes, and wishes him well before driving off. David lights a cigarette and watches the old man’s car until his taillights are swallowed by darkness. He smokes with his back against the wall, paranoid. He doesn’t see anyone looking for him. A cop glances in his direction, pauses long enough to make David’s pulse thump, but then carries on and leaves him alone. He is flabbergasted that he has made it this far. They’re probably still looking for him in the woods by the house. They probably never expected him to come here. 

He goes inside and finds the bathroom before he buys a ticket; he doesn’t want to look worse than he has to, if he can help it. The mirror is cruel, and his face is bruised and ugly in the fluorescent light, but he bends low to the rushing faucet and lets the cool water fill into his gathered palms. He splashes his face and the sting of his inflamed cuts makes him hiss. There’s blood in the hair that’s fallen over his forehead, and he tries his best to rinse it clean. He dabs at the dried blood across the bridge of his nose. It doesn’t look nearly as bad once it’s cleaned, and he determines he’s presentable enough to head into the body of the airport without raising too much suspicion. It’s his eyes that cause him worry. There’s lifelessness reflected there he doesn’t like, so when he approaches the woman behind the ticket counter, he keeps them casually cast down. 

It’s not a careful calculation, by any means, when he purchases a ticket to New York, but his English is passable, and it’s far, far away. He can be obscure in a place like New York City. He can hide. No one knows him, and he doubts he’ll be recognized there as the famous German artist, David Andernach, the poor, pathetic man who lost his daughter and his wife, and whose paintings were never even that great in the first place. But, of course, no one would recognize that about him no matter where he traveled, because that was his life before, in the world behind the door. 

He tries to smile when the woman passes him his ticket, but he can’t quite manage it, and she frowns at him as he turns away. Passing through security takes little time. He’s thankful for having the clarity of mind to rid himself of his pistol in the bathroom. He will be long gone by the time they find it, he hopes, taking a seat in his flight number’s gate. There’s a young girl sitting with her parents in the benches across from him, and he has to change seats. He can’t stand to look at them. He sees their happiness and it makes his eyes burn, so he closes them until they start opening the plane to passengers. 

He has a window seat, and he lets his head lean against the cold glass. Before the plane takes off, he’s asleep. 

\--

New York is cold, and he’s thankful for his heavy sweater, but he also knows it won’t be enough. The first thing he does when he leaves the airport is duck into a shop. He purchases an overcoat, another pack of cigarettes, and then he assesses, a bit belatedly, his financial standing as he sits on a stretch of sidewalk ushered back from the bulk of passerby. David has a twenty dollar bill, American, in his wallet, and a credit card. He is wondering which hotel is nearest when a young girl trips over his extended feet and falls to the ground in front of him with a shout of alarm. 

He moves quickly, jumping up to help straighten her. She is pretty and blonde and very young, maybe seven or eight, no older, and he can’t help but think of Leonie as she smiles up at him and tells him: “I’m fine. It’s okay.” He apologizes again and again, even as she is walking away, and it’s not until she’s disappeared around the corner that he realizes his wallet is gone. 

Instead of cursing and chasing down the thief who was almost certainly the young girl, he lights a cigarette and sits back down. He feels a tingle of awareness that he should be panicked, that he is suddenly penniless and homeless in a foreign city with no friends and no family, but he doesn’t feel panic. It can’t be mustered. All he feels is the bite of icy wind that penetrates his coat, so he turns up the collar and nestles against the brick wall of the sandwich shop he’s chosen to occupy. The chill persists, but the patience of the sandwich shop owner does not, and before too long, David is being shooed away with a broom, like some sort of naughty cartoon cat. He puts up no fuss and scampers down the sidewalk. 

The hours pass and his psychological numbness begins to creep into his bones and raise the hair on his arms, and he shivers against the wind. A shop window has its television set to the weather channel, and David idles in front of the screen and watches the weatherman point aggressively toward an ominous white and pink mass. A snow storm, he warns. Go inside, he warns. The only reaction that stirs within David is a longing to rest, and he continues down the sidewalk in a daze, as if he’s already asleep. 

He finds an alley and sinks behind its dumpster where the wind can’t beat against him so maliciously. Sleep evades him for a long time, until the crescent moon is directly above his hiding place, and he lies on his back to watch it move sluggishly across the washed out city sky. Some time before dawn, David hears a growl, and he stiffens. He’s scared until the sound presents itself once more and he discerns it’s his unhappy stomach, empty and miserable. He rubs his hand across his abdomen while it rumbles, as if to comfort it, as if it’s not attached to him, and then he tries to sleep again. But it’s no good. The sun is already replacing the moon, and the streets are returning to life with honks and food carts and other sounds that hint at normal life for normal people. 

David’s bones feel frozen in his skin, and he groans when he reaches for a cigarette. The smoke makes him nauseous, his stomach an empty, desperate thing, but he keeps smoking it. He thinks of staying where he is, but if all he was going to do was lie down and let himself die, he didn’t need to go all the way to America for that, so he hauls himself to his feet and leaves the alley. He spends the morning walking, just walking, with his hands buried in his coat pockets. The day is overcast and there’s a lingering frostiness hanging in the air. He runs his fingers through his hair and it feels cold. The tip of his nose is numb and he breathes hot into his hands and rubs them together. The scant heat only lasts as long as the friction, and then he is shoving his hands back into his pockets. 

All the while, David looks. Over his shoulder, around corners, overhead. As the day wanes on, he begins to think he truly hasn’t been followed. He has been successful in his escape. He finds himself in a park, midday, and sits on the grass. Maja didn’t escape, didn’t even try, and he wonders what they did to her body after they killed her. They probably called an ambulance, acted pained and shocked. David scowls. They probably told the police he had shot her. That’s what he would have done, if he’d been in the same situation. The thought brings him a fleeting sensation of disgust, but the playful holler of children nearby cloaks his morbid thoughts in temporary sunlight, and he resigns himself to watching the carefree lives of the young as they swing and chase each other through the park. 

Again, he thinks of Leonie. A little girl is sitting by herself, a bucket of chalks beside her, and she’s drawing along the square of cement. David’s fingers flex as he watches her. He wonders what it is she’s drawing with the chalk, but he doesn’t dare approach her. It’s not long before a man and woman summon the girl, leading her away with familial smiles, swinging her by the hands between them. The sight is poisonous to David, but when he sees the tub of chalks left behind, his heart flutters softly. He walks swiftly, to claim the abandoned tools before anyone else. The bucket has a plastic handle, and he lifts it up to carry off, pausing only for a moment to look at the girl’s drawing. It’s a blue butterfly. 

David gives up the park, the bucket of chalks swinging at his side. He finds another alleyway, and sits on the ground, rubbing his hands together before lighting up another cigarette and picking up a bright yellow chalk. It’s not his medium of choice, but he feels lighter as soon as he begins to use it, swirling the color over the grooves of pavement in graceful sweeps. He feels calm while he draws the giant yellow rectangle along the center of the alley, only realizing when he’s done that he’s rendered the image of a door. 

The door. 

The door that’s forever closed to him now. 

The chalk breaks in his hand, and he lets the crumbling pieces fall.

\--

Days pass like dreams, like drifting blankets of fog, and David doesn’t eat, and he only drinks the dregs of water left in old plastic bottles people have tossed to the trash. He draws more doors with his chalks, and he’s filthy with the dusty pastel shades, and the dirt and grime of the alley, and he reeks from searching through the dumpster, and his beard is gruff and grisly. He is smoke and grease and sad rectangles. 

He has been in the city for a week and a half, but his mind begins to forget he was ever anywhere else, and he wonders if he’s insane, if the door existed at all. Or has he always been in the alley, hovering over his bucket of chalk and reeling over Other World conspiracies? 

On the eleventh night, he’s too weak to move, and the weatherman’s snowstorm hastens into the city like a plague of wind and frost. He watches the snowflakes falling fat, fast, and sideways as the wind whips and wails. He’s vaguely aware of approaching footsteps, and he clutches his bucket of chalk to his chest in anticipation. A face appears above him, sooty and grim, and David stares up at the homeless man, his eyes catching on a glint of metal at his side. 

The man’s beanie is matted with snow, and his lips are blue, and he mumbles something to David, but David can’t understand him. He understands the smell that accompanies the man’s breath, however, and perceives he is drunk. Perceives he is holding a blade. 

The man kicks him in the side, and David rolls onto his hands and knees. He’s kicked again, and he coughs. He feels bony fingers digging into his arms, and he’s lifted and thrown against the alley wall, something blunt and cold slamming into his side. It feels like a punch, but when he looks down, he sees the blade handle poking through his coat. The homeless man is upon him again, twisting the blade before pulling it out. He raises it in the air, and David knows he’s trying to kill him. For his coat. 

He grabs the descending wrist before it meets his neck, and he shoves his assailant violently to the ground. There’s a sickening smack as the man’s head bounces on the pavement, and then he is still. David frowns. The man has smudged one of his chalk doors. He picks up his bucket, his other hand pressing firmly against the wound in his side, and he walks out of the alley. 

On the street, the snow is piling up quickly, and David staggers along the powdery white sidewalk. There is a scarlet trail behind him as his blood flows freely, but he’s so cold, he’s almost thankful for the heat seeping down his side. There’s hardly a soul on the whole block, and David wonders if he isn’t, perhaps, already dead and roaming through some frozen Hell. His vision blurs as the snow pounds his face. He stops walking at some point, and just stands, wavering back and forth with the wind. The snow around his feet is soaked with blood, but the wetness dampening his clothes is already frozen. He drops his bucket of chalk, and drops to his knees to retrieve it.

That’s when the vans chug past him slowly on the white road. David squints at them weakly, but he’s more concerned with picking up the pieces of chalk that have scattered and sunk into the bloody snow around him. He doesn’t hear one of the vans when it stops at the end of the block; doesn’t hear the sliding doors slam open, or the shouts, or the cursing as someone runs through a snow bank to reach him. David is looking down at his bloody, frozen hands, trying to sift through the snow for more lost chalk, when a second set of hands appears before him, gloved and gentle and reaching out to touch him. 

David lifts his eyes and falls onto his back, and the gloved hands cup his face, and then, through the frantically swirling snow, he sees. It is the face of a man, leaning over him. His eyes are bright and large and his brow is knitted with concern. His mouth is moving. David cannot hear him, but he watches his lips as they sweetly carve out new shapes. His skin is smooth and pale with cold, but his cheeks are pink. Puffs of white vapor billow from his mouth as he speaks. David’s eyes flutter. He sees the man rising to his feet above him, shouting, gesturing with both arms, and then bending back down. The world begins to darken at the edges, and the last thing he sees is the man reaching for him and smoothing the hair from his forehead. And then David’s eyes fall closed and everything slips away.


	2. Rung Two

David floats in and out of consciousness, aware of hands grasping the small of his back, but unaware of whose; aware he’s being carried, but unaware of why. He hears a slam, and his eyes open for an instant, long enough to see the van door shutting, and then he fades again. 

 

His body feels warm, like he’s submerged in a hot bath, and he shivers. His muscles contract and he hears a moan, knows it’s his own starved cry. Tiny pinpricks burrow in the bend of his elbow, an IV. He tosses his head, rewarded by firm hands holding his jaw. His eyes try to open when he feels pressure applied to his side, but the hands hold him still. He hears the scrape of Velcro as broad straps tighten over his chest. David screams for his lost bucket of chalks and a gentle shush tickles his ear. He sighs and drifts once more.

 

He comes to, briefly, when cool water wets his lips, and his eyes open. He searches for the face he’d seen on the street, but it isn’t there. There is only a woman with a pleasant, calming smile, and she’s tilting a cup to his mouth. He parts his chapped lips and lets the water slip onto his tongue. She pats his shoulder and asks him his name. For a few seconds, David is confused, because she’s speaking English, and then he remembers, slowly, that he’s in New York. He hasn’t spoken to anyone in a long time, and his voice is weak and raspy when he replies. 

“David,” he says. 

She scribbles something down on a sheet of paper and tilts her head at him, sweet but curious, before asking, with suspicious kindness, “And your last name?”

“Andernach,” he answers, winning an even bigger grin. 

She writes his last name down on the paper and slips it inside a folder. The folder is blue, with a big design of an eye printed at its center. David looks beyond the woman at the wall, where the same eye is hanging, huge and daunting. 

“You’re going to be alright, David,” she tells him. She brings a warm washcloth to his forehead, stepping forward and blocking the eye from David’s view. He lets his vision blacken and falls asleep. 

\--

When he wakes this time, the woman is there, still smiling, and she tells him he’s been resting soundly for three days. There is an IV in his arm, feeding him much needed fluids, and she insists he try and eat something solid. His stab wound was shallow, she says, and it was his malnourishment that caused the bulk of their alarm. 

His fingers skim over the bandages at his side, and he remembers the homeless man in the beanie. He wonders if he survived the alley, or if he’d been buried in a snowy grave. The idea of the man’s death doesn’t over-concern David, it merely makes him curious, but he forgets about it when the woman brings him some cherry Jell-O. He eats it, and it makes his stomach cramp. The ill feeling in his gut doesn’t last long, however, and soon he is requesting more to eat. The woman is happy to oblige, and she brings him some lightly buttered toast. She tells him he should try and stand up today, maybe take a shower, if he thinks he’s up to it. 

He’s weak and his body is exhausted, but he’s also filthy, and the urge to get clean trumps his desire to go back to sleep, so when he’s finished with his toast, she helps him get out of bed. She offers him her arm, and he grasps it wearily. He can feel tight flesh pulling at his side beneath the bandage and grits his teeth. His muscles are on fire. 

Swinging his legs to the floor is the hardest part of the process, his abdomen screaming at him until his feet touch the tiles, and then the woman is hooking her arms beneath his armpits and helping him lift. Dizziness hits him, hard and fast, and he nearly falls, but a second set of hands appears just in time. David turns his head and sees a handsome, dark-skinned man helping him find his balance. At the guidance of his helpers, he breathes in and out, slow, steady breaths, until the room stops spinning. He tries to laugh, and the exertion brings a sharp pain to his wound. Once it’s passed, the three of them trudge across the room together, David in the center. His mind flashes back to the little girl swinging between her parents in the park. He remembers his chalk, and his throat inexplicably constricts. 

They walk David to a connecting bathroom. The man holds him steady as the woman readies the shower. David tells her he likes it scorching, and soon the room is filled with steam. She leaves after that, but the man offers to stay and help. David lets him untie the back of his hospital gown, realizing for the first time that he’s wearing one, but then he requests some privacy. The man tells him he’ll be right outside, to not hesitate, to ask for help if he needs it. 

He manages the shower on his own, for as long as he can stand the pressure of remaining upright. He takes off his bandage and gasps at the thick, black stitches in his skin, and then he steps beneath the rush of hot water. They must have sponge-bathed him while he was asleep, because the water running down the drain is mostly clear. He shampoos his hair, and even his beard, which has grown thick and unkempt over the weeks, and he’s only just managed to rinse it clean when he feels like collapsing. He yells, and the man bursts into the room to help him from the shower. David blushes as he’s patted down with a soft white towel, but he’s too worn out to be overly embarrassed. He lets the man re-bandage his wound and drape a fresh gown over his shoulders. 

When he’s back in bed, he asks for more toast, but by the time it arrives, David’s already fallen back to sleep.

He dreams about the face with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, leaning over him as he bleeds out, the blizzard rushing around them, blocking out the rest of the world. The man’s lips are parted, moving, and David can finally hear his voice. 

“You’re going to be okay,” he tells David, and it’s a blood-heating command. His voice is deep and peaceful and confident. “I’ve got you,” he says. His gloved hands frame David’s face. “I’ve got you.”

\--

David continues to look for the face when he wakes, but he never sees it. He only sees the woman and man from before, when they come to change his bandages and bring him meals and help him wash. He decides there is no such face, that the image of the gloved man was a hallucination, his angel leading him to sanctuary. 

A handful of days pass, and David learns he’s in a religious compound of sorts. Meyerists, they call themselves. They’re in the habit of taking in disaster victims, and they’d been combing the city on the night of the blizzard, trying to save as many homeless people as they could. It’s strange to David to hear himself referred to as ‘homeless,’ but that’s what he is. Or was. Now they’re telling him he doesn’t have to go back to the streets. He’s welcome to join their movement. When he’s well enough, he can attend a service. They don’t realize, and he’ll never tell them, that he’ll never find a home here. Not in this world.

From his window, now that he’s fit enough to stand and look out of it, he sees rows upon rows of cabins, and lots of trees. Everything is covered in brilliant, gleaming snow, but he can tell he’s not in the city anymore. The woman says they’re in upstate New York, and he’s glad. He hates the city now, as he thinks back to its unforgiving ground and blistering wind. 

He asks the woman, with a lump in his throat, if they have any paint. She brings him a palette of acrylics and thick paper. He spends the evening sitting by the window and painting, from memory, The Face. The more David thinks of it, the more details appear before his eyes, and the more unlikely it seems to him that ever a face such as this one existed. His hand is steady. He takes special care to get the mouth just right, the way it parts and smirks at its edges; the dips and the softness and the supple bow. He paints the snow around the face, the glint in the bright eyes, the long, black lashes. The nose gives him the most enjoyment as he forms the asymmetrical shape, devoting so much time to shading the space beneath his left nostril that his eyes begin to haze over, and he’s lost in a myriad of burnt umber and ivory. 

David is smiling, filling the shell of the right ear, when the woman enters the room with a tray. 

“David,” she says gently, “I’ve brought you some chamomile.” 

Her voice lifts him from his painting, and he sets down his brush. “Thank you, Carol.” 

Carol brings him the tea, and he hears her gasp over his shoulder. When he turns to look, her eyes are wide and she’s smiling at the painting. “That’s amazing, David,” she tells him, patting his shoulder. She bends lower for a better view, and her hair falls in a flower-scented curtain against David’s cheek. “I had no idea you were so talented.”

He mumbles a gracious “thank you,” and sips his tea. He wants her to leave so he can finish his painting. She looks a bit longer before she stands back up. “Such an amazing likeness,” she says. 

David frowns and twists around in his chair to face her fully. “What?” he asks. 

“I said,” Carol repeats as she picks up the tea tray, “it’s such an amazing likeness. It looks exactly like him.”

She heads for the door, and his head is spinning. Before she leaves, he asks, “I’m sorry, who does it look like?”

She gives him an odd look and answers, “Well, Cal, of course.” 

He nods his head stupidly, and she wishes him a goodnight. When the door closes behind her, and he’s alone, he picks up his brush and stares at the painting. 

Cal.

David decides with the next stroke of his paintbrush that his convalescence has lasted long enough. Tomorrow he will leave the medical cabin and find the face from his dream. 

\--

The snow crunches beneath his shoes. They – someone – has made a suitable walking path in the loop that tucks along the cabins, and it is upon this path, with Carol at his side, that David walks. Limps, rather, is more accurate an account, because his side is aching and his muscles are tight, and every step is a tiny ordeal. But David needs the exercise, and he needs the fresh air. More urgently, he needs to find Cal. As if the act of seeing something he’d thought imaginary will prove the other impossibilities of his life a reality. 

So Carol walks and David limps, and all the while he keeps a roving eye about him. No face strikes him as The Face, but he continues his discreet hunting as Carol chatters on about ladders and the benefits of Meyerism. 

He lets her prattle on, soothed by her voice. David isn’t a religious man, and he finds little interest in the beliefs of the movement that took him in. They seem a kindly group, regardless. He receives warm smiles from everyone they pass, though there aren’t many people out in this weather to smile at him. 

When he trips over his feet and nearly falls on his face – would have done, if Carol hadn’t quickly yanked on his elbow – it’s agreed he return to the medical cabin for more rest. He can’t exactly protest, not with the aching in his side. He feels like he might fall over any moment; it feels like it’s been years since he’s been on his feet so long. 

Carol settles him in his bed, but before she leaves, she reaches into her canvas tote bag and flourishes a book in her hand. She tells him to read it over, if he’s so inclined. David agrees, somewhat uninterestedly, and flips through it once she’s gone. As expected, it’s a book on the Meyerist movement. More blather about ladders. He skims. He wants to read enough of it to politely discuss it with Carol, or whoever else questions him about it; Cal, maybe, if he ever sees him again. 

David glances over at the painting of his face, currently propped up on the table by the window. Minutes pass. He blinks rapidly, his eyes watering, and he forces his attention back to the book. Silly, silly, silly, and then…

Light.

A ladder that leads one to the light. Literal light. Dr. Meyers is supposedly bathed in light. 

A flash appears behind David’s eyes, and he sees the door, outlined in a peculiar golden light, a beacon in the black of the tunnel. He flips the page of the book and finds an illustration: a ladder, flushed with a yellow glow. Suddenly, his heart is beating too hard, and he can’t abide the stillness of his body or the quiet of the room. He springs from the bed, too quickly than should be allowed with the wound in his side and the weakness in his muscles, and his feet hurry him to the window, which he opens despite the frosty chill in the air. A breeze rushes in and ruffles the hair from his forehead. David shivers, but he can’t feel it. He can feel the handle of the paintbrush as he wraps his fingers around it, grasping it painfully tight, and he can feel the paper, smooth beneath his palm, but too small. No, he can’t create that on this. He needs more. His eyes flitter around the room before landing on their ultimate target. The wall is blank and white, with only the giant eye to maneuver around. It’s easy to lift from the wall, and he sets it gently on the bed. Then his way is clear, his path is obvious.

The yellow ochre squeezes from the tube with some effort, and David mixes it with china white and the water left over from his dinner. The yellow-white wash is now bright and waiting on his palette, and he submerges his brush, dipping its bristles. He bites his lower lip as he marks his first dash on the wall. 

Possessed, David paints feverishly, a large yellow rectangle, the door. He takes a step back, breathless, and smoothes a trembling hand over his sweaty brow. Freshly falling snowflakes drift through the open window. He looks back at the page in the book and assesses the ladder anew, then he mixes more paint and commits the ascending ladder to the wall. A ladder, cloaked in a supernatural sunlight, beside a door, so similar in ideas it’s almost like they’re born from the same wood, the same tree. David startles as the idea penetrates him. 

It’s as though they are born from the same world.

He drops his brush and walks slowly to the connecting bathroom. His fingers clutch the sink and shaking wracks his body. He lifts his head and sees himself reflected in the semi-darkness. Paint streaks across his nose and his forehead where he’s wiped away the dampness of his effort. He can hardly recognize himself. He’s too thin, his cheekbones jut sharp and terrible, and his beard is wiry and disheveled, its silver patches aging him older than he’d like to be aged. He looks into his eyes, dark in the shadows of the bathroom, and imagines he sees, reflected in his blown pupils, a pinprick of yellow light. 

It can’t be. He’s believing what he wants to believe. The door to David’s world is gone, collapsed forever in a destroyed tunnel, and this ladder, this ascension into the light, is nothing more than a make-believe coincidence. David is so desperate to find a lifeline to his world, he’s clutching at illustrations in a book. He sighs and scrubs the paint off his face. He finds the razor in the cabinet beneath the sink and twirls it between his fingers, considering. The beard needs to go. 

And it does, with many swipes of the blade and bountiful suds in the sink basin. David rinses his face clean when he’s finished. He looks more like himself now, now that the weeks of unattended growth is gone, the mark of his devastation disappeared beneath a sharp edge. His skin feels smooth beneath his fingertips, but he isn’t happy. He doesn’t look like David Andernach. He looks like his ghost. 

David emerges from the bathroom and the cold hits him at last. He eyes his bold handiwork on the wall as he crosses to the window. Pointless symbols that mean nothing, he decides. The ladder can’t be like the door. There are no magical lights leading to alternate universes, and there are no perfect faces, carved like angels. He pushes at the window pane, trying to close it, but it sticks. David curses beneath his breath and slams his fist against the thick glass. It doesn’t shatter, which is mildly disappointing, but the sound of it draws attention from a man walking along the path outside the medical cabin. David sees the passing figure, half hidden in the darkness of the hour, and freezes. The man has turned his head, and he sees David in the window. The light illuminates The Face as their eyes meet. 

David gasps and steps away from the window. He can’t breathe. He slams his back up against the wall and grabs at his chest. It feels like he’s choking. Bending over, hands grasping his knees, David takes deep, labored breaths. He isn’t calm when he looks back out, but he no longer fears he is dying. All he sees is newly fallen snow and a track of footprints leading down the path. The Face is gone. Cal is gone.

David heaves against the window and it finally shuts with a bang. He collapses onto the bed and stares at the ladder in the book, unbelieving.


	3. Rung Three

“David, what happened here?” 

Carol’s usually smiling face is twisted into a perplexed frown as she looks at the yellow markings on the wall. David shifts uncomfortably from his seat by the window. He has been sitting there all morning, hoping to see Cal walk by again. He hasn’t walked by, of course, but David still waits and watches, and it’s hard for him to pry his eyes away for even a second, to look at Carol apologetically. He has the good sense to look abashed when she crosses her arms and fixes him with an exasperated expression. 

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. His hands glide over the soft skin of his freshly shaven chin. 

She waits for a moment, probably for him to elaborate. When he doesn’t, she sighs and uncrosses her arms. To David’s surprise, her eyebrows un-furrow and a slight grin bends the corners of her mouth. “You know, David,” she says, crossing to the window, “it might be time for you to move into one of the guest quarters.” She shivers, because he has the window open again. “If you had your own room, your own space, it wouldn’t matter if you wanted to paint on the walls.”

His eyes dart between the path outside his window and Carol, who is leaning against the wall, her body language relaxed, amiable. 

“But the medical cabin is a place for everyone,” Carol continues. “You disrespected a space that doesn’t belong to you.” She nods her head at the giant eye, which David has leaned against the bed frame. “I think it would be a nice idea for you to repaint the wall, David, after the service this morning.”

This catches his attention. David straightens in his chair. “I can attend a service?” he asks. His voice is barely above a whisper.

“I don’t see why not,” Carol says. She extends her hand and he takes it. “Tell you what,” she says as she helps him to his feet, “I’m headed over there now. Why don’t you come with me?”

David clears his throat, which is suddenly tight, constricted, but he nods when she lifts a curious brow, and together they leave the medical cabin. 

With his beard gone, the winter air is icy against his skin, and David tucks his chin in the warm folds of the thick sweater Carol has provided. But despite the chill, he feels lighter this morning. His stomach is full and he’s clean, and, as far as he can tell, no one is lurking in the shadows, waiting for a chance to silence him. For the moment, David feels safe, and that feeling doubles when Carol takes him by the elbow and ushers him inside a building not unlike a church. Inside, it is warm and welcoming, and people are milling around, speaking with one another. No one pays special attention to David, but he’s not immune to receiving their broad, friendly smiles and the occasional handshake. David tries his best to smile back. He shakes a few hands, even though his palms are sweaty from nerves. Carol remains blessedly at his side as this commences, and, one by one, people begin to find their seats in the pew-like rows of chairs. At the top of the room, beneath boastfully immense windows, is a stage of sorts, and it is toward the stage everyone stares, patiently eager. 

Carol seats David near the stage, and he folds his hands in his lap anxiously. She sits beside him just as the lights dim. An eerie hush falls across the waiting crowd. 

David’s glance is drawn to a side door, which is illuminated around its right angles, more light creeping through more entryways. He holds his breath as the door opens, and there, right there, crystal clear and ethereally gorgeous, like a living painting, a corporeal, vivid masterpiece, is The Face. 

Cal Roberts nods his head at the crowd as he gently shuts the door behind him, and he smiles modestly as he steps up to take the stage. His scent reaches David in a wave of sensation. David inhales through his nose and smells his warmth. Clean heat. That’s how Cal smells. David’s eyelids flutter as he directs his attention to center stage, where Cal is standing. Not just standing, but commanding, evoking, demanding. His body is backlit from the bright light of the tall windows behind him, but David is sitting close, and he can see him perfectly. And when Cal moves his head to survey his audience, the angles of his impossible face catch the beams of light, and David perceives his image in highlighted elegance. His jaw is fetchingly square and shorn smooth as his own. His hair, which David hadn’t seen before on the street when it was covered in a hat, is trimmed short. Everything about him appears carefully constructed to David, from the crisp white sweater he wears snugly against a muscular, compact body, to the half-smile he wears on his lips. He looks much like the painting, much like David remembered him to look when he had been a mere fever dream behind his lids. Now he is standing before him. David’s hands are clenched into fists at his sides. He feels a bead of sweat budding at his hairline. He moistens his lips with his tongue. He watches.

“Twenty,” Cal says. The sound of his voice sends a lick of fire down David’s spine. It’s deep, resonating. He’s intoxicated by its lilting measures. “That’s how many souls were lost to the blizzard.” 

Whispers and murmurs of combined sadness and regret muddle throughout the space. Cal hangs his head for a moment, and David struggles to breathe. He fills his lungs, but it burns. On the stage, Cal shakes his head and wrings his hands together. Then he speaks again. 

“But you won’t turn on the news and hear that number,” Cal says. David can see Carol in his peripheral, nodding in agreement. “You won’t see that number in the papers or hear it in passing. Twenty souls lost to the storm, and no one will ever know. And why?” 

David doesn’t realize it, but he has inched up along his chair and is poised at its edge. His breath is shallow. He feels outside of himself as he soaks Cal in, as he stares at the dark, arching eyebrows. 

“Because,” Cal continues, his voice growing louder, increasing in enthusiasm, “those poor souls belonged to the homeless.” David swallows. His mouth is dry. “How can a people mourn something so invisible to them?” Cal hesitates, lets the question permeate, and then he strikes. “The city of New York ignored its helpless and twenty people died. Froze to death.” He slams a fist into his hand. “Twelve." A long pause. "That’s the number of souls saved.”

The crowd sounds pleased. There is clapping. David can hear his heart in his ears. 

“Our movement saved twelve people that would have died otherwise, if left to the carelessness of others.” 

More clapping. Carol pats David’s shoulder. Cal’s face is alight with passion. His nostrils flare, his jaw works slightly sideways. It’s imperfectly hypnotic. 

“That’s twelve new souls with us today,” Cal says. “Twelve lives saved. Let’s raise our hands and join together in welcoming our guests to the light.”

A shuffle erupts within the room as everyone lifts their arms, their palms extending outward, their eyes closed. David stays still, watching every move Cal makes. He watches him lift his arms and close his eyes, his chin tilting up. Cal sucks in a deep breath. The crowd copies him, and then the entire room exhales together. 

David stands. Not because he wants to, but because he can no longer sit still, not with the strange surge of emotion rioting through his body. His chair clatters backwards with the brutality of his movement, and Carol touches his wrist. He pulls away from her and his feet carry him forward several steps, until his hands are rushing ahead of him and his fingers are splayed on the edge of the stage. 

David is dizzy. His breath is short. Noises of surprise and confusion surround him. 

“No, no, it’s alright. Give him some room,” comes a voice from above. 

David shudders, looks up through his fallen bangs in time to see Cal leaping from the stage and to his side. He can feel the point on his body where they’re in contact, because it pierces him. A hand on his forearm. It’s hot, even through his sweater. David falls, but he never reaches the floor, because Cal catches him, hoists him up, slinging his arm over shockingly strong shoulders. David can’t keep his head from lolling heavily, even when he feels Cal’s chest beneath his skin. And then the scent hits him and he groans into it. He is mindless, delirious as Cal half-carries him through the side door. 

Pinpoints of light dance in his eyes and David fights the threat of unconsciousness that looms nearby. He is not so out of sorts that he cannot feel the solidness of the chair now beneath him. And he is aware of being watched. Closely. He tries to focus on his breathing, and when a cup is placed in his hands, he grips it weakly. 

“Drink some,” Cal says softly. 

David lifts the cup to his lips and manages a sip. It’s ice cold, and the coolness helps a bit to ground him, as does the steadfast hand clasping his shoulder. When he can, he lifts his head. Cal is sitting at the edge of a desk, concern glowing behind dark blue eyes. David shifts awkwardly in the chair. The cup of water shakes in his hands. 

“Have anything stronger than water?” David asks with a harsh burst of tired laughter. 

Cal’s eyebrows screw up for an instant, and he turns away. He rummages through a drawer of the desk and returns with a single glass, two fingers full of amber liquid. David accepts it, uncomfortably aware of their fingers brushing together at the point of transfer. He drinks down the liquid, blessedly strong whiskey, finishing it in a single swallow. Cal is quick to take the glass from his hand. David fidgets beneath the stark attention of the man before him, who has resumed his lean against the desk, head cocked to the side, eyes squinting at David with interest. 

“Better?” Cal asks after a pause. 

David returns his stare, even when it makes his heart putter maniacally in his chest. He is in a state of disassociation, perhaps, because none of this seems real. The Face is directed solely at David, and with that knowledge, he is unsure of how to react. This moment should be an impossibility. But his quickened pulse is all too real, as is the dampness of his forehead, the trembling of his hands. Cal leans forward slightly, his lips in a straight line, and David realizes he hasn’t answered, so he nods. It seems a meager gesture in the presence of Cal, but it is all his weakened state will allow.

“Carol shouldn’t have dragged you here in your condition,” Cal says. “The others might have been well enough, but you could use more rest. Are you alright?” 

David nods again. He can’t recall feeling so nervous. Not when he’d been running through the woods, not when he’d been escaping through the airport, not when he’d found himself alone and penniless in an unfamiliar city. Those situations had been trying, difficult, yes, but they hadn’t scored up such a nervous bundle in the pit of his stomach. He is conscious of every breath, every movement, both his own and Cal’s. He feels the sweat roll down his forehead, and wipes at it with the back of his hand.

“Oh,” Cal whispers suddenly. A closed-mouth smile spreads his lips. “It’s you.” He drags a hand over his face and then rubs it over the back of his neck as he continues watching David, fascination now clearly flourishing. “I didn’t recognize you without,” he explains, his hand now motioning around his own fine jaw, “the beard.”

“Oh,” David says. “I don’t usually have one.” He wonders if he should keep talking, if he should explain why he had a beard, why he’d been homeless, why, why, but he keeps his mouth shut, because Cal is standing up and moving away from him and David sees his shape fully for the first time, un-obscured by shadow or winter gear. 

And David’s reaction to Cal’s presented figure is disconcerting. The man is only walking across the room to crack open the door, but David can’t tear his eyes away. Cal pokes his head out the door and speaks to someone, and David’s eyes sear into the curvatures of his back. Cal is smaller than David, but not by a great amount. His shoulders are quite broad, and his waist is narrow. His backside is shapely and firm and David is inexplicably drawn to the creases it makes in Cal’s trousers as he shifts his weight. 

Artists, he reasons inwardly, are drawn to beautiful things in any form, and he is objective in his understanding that Cal is a beautiful thing. And it isn’t a new understanding, after all. The Face had ingrained itself into David’s memory at first sight, so is it so unusual for the body of such a face to render him equally, if not more, distracted? 

Cal shuts the door softly and turns back to David, catching him in the middle of biting at his lip. He approaches David slowly. David finds himself admiring the minor swish of his hips at every step. That nervous bundle in his gut moves further south, and he stifles a gasp of surprise at the first jolt of arousal. 

“David,” Cal says, and David feels red-cheeked and sick. Cal nears him, leaning against the desk, so close David can catch the waft of his skin on the air. The tingle of excitement expands in his groin, and he crosses his hands over his lap. “We’re going to get you all better.”

The words make him shudder. He can still smell him and it’s dizzying. He wonders if he will faint again. If Cal touches him, he knows he will. 

Suddenly, the door opens. Carol walks in, a few women David doesn’t recognize accompanying her. 

“David,” Carol says, rushing to his side. “I’m so sorry. I should have known you were still too weak.” 

Cal is standing now, his arms crossed. He keeps a steady eye on David as the women help him up. “It’s okay, Carol. David just needed some air.”

David lets Carol and the others usher him quickly toward the door, but he cranes his neck as they walk through it, to catch a final look at Cal. He’s holding the bottle of whiskey in his hands, face pale, but he glances up, like he knows that David is watching, and their eyes meet. David blanches, nearly collapses, but the others keep him upright. Cal’s eyes widen, he takes a step forward as if to follow them, but then stops. 

The door swings shut between them.


	4. Rung Four

David is escorted past the medical cabin, and he watches it warily as they turn the corner to a new row of cabins. 

“You’re lucky,” Carol tells him as she leads him up the porch steps. “We have a new vacancy. You’ll be able to work on your art. If you want.” She holds the door open for him and he’s led inside by the elbow. 

He remembers the giant ladder and door he painted on the medical cabin’s wall, and when the other ladies have settled him onto a cozy bed in a modest bedroom, he poses the question to her. “Don’t you want me to fix up the other wall?”

Carol shrugs her shoulders. “Cal said not to worry about it.”

The curious jolt in his stomach bothers him. He feels half hard in his jeans at the mere mention of Cal's name. “It’s no trouble. I’m not so weak I can’t clean up after myself.” He’s speaking more than he has before, and Carol notices. In fact, she looks pleased. 

“He wanted to see your work,” Carol says. “There’s more paint in that drawer,” she adds before she leaves. The others follow her out. David waits until he hears the front door of the cabin close before he stands from the bed and finds the tubes of paint. He looks around. There’s no canvas, no paper, just a wide expanse of blank walls. 

Cal wanted to see his work. 

David is aching now. Throbbing. He finds the brushes in a can on a dresser. On top of the dresser is his painting of Cal. The last thing David needs to see right now. He strains against denim. It’s overwhelming. But he refuses release. Instead, he grabs up his brush and paints and begins frantically mixing hues. He pauses for a second, to strip away his thick sweater. He doesn’t want to make a mess. Shirtless, hard, he slashes at the wall with his paintbrush. Cal’s portrait is at his back, and David imagines himself being watched as his arms lift and the paint smears.

Bright, yellow shapes, long and rectangular, tall and runged. David sweeps the images from his mind to the wall. His heartbeat quickens. A jagged line of paint smudges across his bare chest. He dips his brush and flings the bristles to the wall, splatters of gold dripping onto his cheek. He pushes his hair back from his eyes, surveying his work. The door, the ladder, the light. His stomach is warm from the whiskey. He backs up until his hips hit the dresser and he turns. Cal’s painting. David pushes up against the edge of the dresser, this time with purpose. He moans as his hardness rubs against it. 

“David?”

He freezes. 

“I knocked, but there was no answer.”

David can’t turn around, he’s too obviously hard. His palms press sweaty on the dresser top as he hears Cal’s footsteps entering the room. 

“You’re an artist, then.”

David squeezes his eyes shut and counts to ten. When he finally turns around, he’s still half-hard, but he folds his hands in front of his crotch and thinks it must not look too obvious. Cal isn’t looking at him anyway, but at the images still wet on the wall. 

He cautions a step forward. Clears his throat. “I was an artist when I lived in Germany,” he rasps, voice thin and unsteady with nerves. He takes another step forward. Now that he’s in the same space as Cal, he feels drawn to him. He wants to move closer, needs to, but grabs the post of the bed to stop himself. He settles to watch the back of Cal as he looks up at the paintings. 

Cal speaks to him without looking away from the wall. “So that’s the accent,” he says, satisfied. “I kept trying to place it, but you’ve said so little. No one knows anything about you.”

“You know I was an artist in Germany,” David counters, and now Cal does turn to look at him. David is suddenly horribly aware of his shirtlessness. He wonders if Cal notices. Of course he notices, David scolds himself; he’s standing there half-naked, covered in paint like a neon Neanderthal. 

“Was?” Cal asks as both eyebrows lift amusedly. His eyes flash downward, ever so slightly; just long enough for David to notice. “This,” he says, waving at the wall, “doesn’t look past tense to me.”

David isn’t sure what to say to that, or to the newfound pinkness present at the tips of Cal’s ears. He releases the bedpost and finds himself finally joining Cal’s side. They’re both silent, taking in the bright images.

“The ladder?” Cal asks without looking at him. 

David nods and then says, softly, “Yes.”

“And this, next to it?” Cal asks, motioning to the second image. “You painted this in medic, too.” His head turns, and he fastens his eyes on David. “A door?”

David meets his gaze, but his voice is caught in his throat. Cal’s eyes bore into his for an agonizing moment, and then he’s putting his hands in his pockets and moving away from him. Probably because David’s bare-chested, a bit sweaty, and still half hard. If David had to guess from body language alone, he’d say his guest is uncomfortable, the way he won’t face him head on, the way his eyes never linger on his longer than mere seconds at a time, but his voice is confident and smooth when he speaks. It is a contradiction, and David is fascinated. So fascinated that, for a moment, he forgets his own discomfort and steps toward Cal in an almost aggressive fashion. Instantly, the scent of him engulfs David’s brain, and he feels high on it, on Cal’s existence. It is intoxicating. He feels a stirring below and bites his lip. 

If Cal notices any of this absurd behavior, he doesn’t let on, or he drums it up to quirky European mannerisms. He is halfway to the door, but lingering, flustering David utterly. Why is he lingering?

“I used to know something about art,” Cal says to the floor. 

David’s mouth answers before his brain can pause his lips. “Used to? Past tense?”

“Now there’s only one piece of art I need.” 

David quirks an eyebrow wonderingly, and Cal nods his head toward the eye David hasn’t noticed yet, the one hanging on the back of the door. The Meyerist symbol, he presumes. He doesn’t find it in his particular aesthetical tastes, but doubts that’s the point Cal is making. 

“Your faith leaves no room in your life for beauty?” David asks, curious. 

Cal laughs, and his hand clasps around a chain, hidden beneath his snowy white sweater. “My faith is what’s beautiful to me.”

David bites his tongue. He can’t tell the man in front of him that his beauty is enough to inspire faith itself, despite how badly he wants to. So he shrugs, trying not to take another step forward, but it's difficult, because Cal is nearly glowing in David’s eyes. He can smell the sweet, clean heat radiating from his skin. Which is impossible. This is all impossible.

“I feel the same way,” David says after a thoughtful silence, “about making art. I would - …” His sentence drifts like snow. He would…have nothing if he didn’t have his art, is what he was going to say. But everything has already been stripped of him, hasn’t it? He thinks fleetingly of the bucket of chalks. How upset he had been when it had been lost. He thinks, unstoppably, of all the things he’s lost over the years. His daughter, twice, his wife, his friends, his fucking world. 

“David?” Cal asks, and David realizes his mistake, that he’s been wavering on his feet, his eyes wide and wet and unclear. 

“Can I smoke in here?” David asks with sudden inspiration. He realizes it’s been days and days since he’s had a cigarette. He hasn’t even thought about it, but now, with Cal standing in his room, staring at him, he wants one, needs to busy his hands. 

Cal appraises him behind thick eyelashes. “It’s frowned upon in the cabins,” he says. David nods, and then Cal adds, “But if you open the window…”

David thinks the expression on his face might be a smile, but it’s hard to assess as he becomes a whirlwind of reaching, shaky fingers, searching his jacket pocket for his pack of cigarettes, and that’s when he remembers, of course, that he doesn’t have any. He ran out, after about a day and a half of living on the street. He collapses his hands to his sides. “Never mind,” he says, mostly to himself. He turns stupidly to Cal, and is unprepared for what he sees. Cal is standing in front of his dresser, his fingers reaching out to gently touch the edge of David’s painting. The portrait of The Face, Cal’s face. His cheeks flood with embarrassment. To his surprise, so do Cal’s.

“When did you do this?” Cal asks, his voice smaller than David has yet heard it. His fingers continue stroking the painting’s edges. David watches the minute motions avidly. 

“When I woke up,” David says. It feels like a confession, and comes out as a whisper. 

“I didn’t think you’d remember my face. You were barely conscious when I found you.” 

David’s throat is doing the thing it keeps doing where he feels like he won’t be able to breathe in the near future. The nervous knot in his stomach swells. His cock twitches irrationally. He’s sweating. Worst of all, he’s taking yet another step toward Cal. 

“I remembered it perfectly,” David says, a hush, a plea. 

Cal finally turns away from the painting. His pupils are huge and his face is pale. His breaths are frequent but irregular, and David is reminded of a delicate, small creature, cowering from a predator. If he’s being honest, David feels like a predator, his shadow falling across Cal’s on the floor between them. 

“That’s how you saw me?” Cal asks. 

David inhales; it’s sharp in his lungs. “It’s how I see you.” He smiles. “Present tense.” 

Cal looks lost, standing halfway between David and the door, one hand back to the chain around his neck, the other flexing at his side. He doesn’t move back immediately when David steps closer, but he begins to shiver noticeably and work his jaw, a facial tick brought on by…what, David wonders? He feels his own body speeding, racing beneath his skin. Do they share a reason for such physical upset? David makes it one more step before Cal’s resolve breaks and he makes an obvious effort toward the door, toward the exit. 

“I hope you decide to stay here,” Cal says, his voice sounding too loud in the doorframe. “I can see the light in you.”

“Thank you,” David says.

Cal smiles, but it’s strained, and then he leaves, closing the door quickly behind him. 

David just stares at the space he used to occupy as the beginning of epiphany hits him square in the chest. His stomach aches and he sits down before he falls. His eyes rest upon the paint still drying on the wall. The door, the ladder, the light. Cal sees the light in David. 

David curses, runs his fingers through his hair. He’s not sure what to do, or what to think or what to feel. But he knows, with absolute surety, that he can see the light in Cal too.


	5. Rung Five

David restricts himself from finding release that night. But he wants to. He grinds his palm over the bulge in his jeans when Cal leaves, but forces himself to stop, his hands balling into fists in his bedspread. He sprawls on the mattress, damp and miserable and confused. His hardness lasts a long time, even as he’s finally falling asleep. David dreams, and it’s slick and humid and helpless. He is cloaked in golden light, and there, standing over him, shimmering and beautiful, is Cal. 

When David wakes in the morning, it’s to sticky thighs and dirty sheets. 

 

His stab wound is healing well; Carol informs him when he meets her at the medical cabin. They go for another walk, and even though David tires quickly, he doesn’t stumble, and he doesn’t grow faint. He’s steady on his feet at last. Until they pass Cal, who is walking in the opposite direction down the snowy path, speaking animatedly with a pretty woman. David narrows his eyes at her. She’s freckled and sweet, and Cal laughs at something she whispers in his ear. As their groups pass one another, Cal looks up and catches David’s eye. 

Carol says hello, Cal says hello, David says hello, Freckles says hello. How pleasant everyone is. And then it’s over, because Cal takes his companion’s arm and they hurry down the path. David is left looking over his shoulder at his figure stalking away. The pull in his stomach aches, but he forces a smile at Carol and they continue on. 

 

Over the next few days, David is given more literature to read on the movement. Everyone is pleased by his interest. A lot of the other homeless saved from the blizzard have chosen to move on, but then, David reasons, they were true nomads. David isn’t a nomad. He has a home. He can’t reach it, but he has one. So it becomes he is the only one left, at the end of the second week, left over from the storm salvation. 

The people in the compound are kind and considerate. When David attends the next service, they watch him worriedly, wondering if he’ll make a scene again, wondering if he’s still too weak to be out and about with such excitement. And the service is exciting, to be sure. 

Cal breezes through the side door, fresh snow on his shoulders, his cheeks pink from the brisk wind. He flounces to center stage and launches with addictive zeal into the teachings of Dr. Meyers, and the ladder, and the steps to reach the light. David listens. He tries to understand, but it seems to him, increasingly so, that not even Cal truly understands. There is a light they’re trying to reach, but no one seems to have a genuine grasp on anything, what it means, what it signifies. But when Cal speaks, his eyes shine, his easy authority on all things Meyerist moves his audience, moves David, and when he is finished with his speech, he lifts his hands and everyone follows suit, even David. They inhale, eyes closed. They exhale, pushing out their hands from their chests. The service ends with chattering and hugs and an over-all feeling of faithful zest. David feels a buzz of faith in his own chest, but it’s not for a pretend ascension to a world of light. It’s a curious spark of hope, for a light that leads to his own world. 

He tries to approach Cal after service, but finds himself avoided. David’s extended hand is subtly refused. Cal smiles tensely at him and quickly finds a reason to leave before any contact can be made between them.

It only builds the nameless desire inside David. He wants to touch him. Not just sexually. Not really. David has tried not to dwell too much on his arousal in regards to Cal, but he can’t refuse the yearning he feels to touch. He watches him from a distance, across the dining hall, on the stage, from his window, and he wants to stroke his face and feel the texture of his skin. David wants to trace the edge of Cal’s jaw with his fingertips. He wants to know how it feels. The longer Cal avoids him, the greater the urge becomes. David is convinced Cal’s skin will be hot to the touch. David is convinced Cal is full of light. To David, he glows. 

He wants so desperately to touch him.

\--

It’s evening and David is painting. It has been weeks since he’s relocated to the little cabin, and his walls are nearly covered. He stands before the farthest wall, where he’s pushed the bed to the center of the room, out of his way. He wields his paintbrush, stroking languid strips of yellow. He works shirtless, and his torso is splattered with paint. Little dots of yellow dry at the ends of his thick chest hair. A smudge highlights his left cheekbone. 

He isn’t painting a ladder or a door tonight. His lower lip is raw from biting. He works on the silhouette diligently, stepping away frequently to check his progress. A cigarette burns in the ashtray he keeps propped on the open windowsill. He'd asked Carol for cigarettes and she'd delivered them, even though she wrinkled her nose in disapproval. He crosses to his window, takes a drag of the cigarette, sets it down. He exhales, slow and smooth. Cal’s profile is life-size on his wall, surrounded by light. It’s the way he looked at the last service, when he’d turned his head and the light had blazed serenely along the angles of his face. David had watched him, lips parted, committing the sight to memory. He’d waited all day, playing it over and over in his mind, and now he’s finally finished.

He stares at his work. Pleased, but not sated. Not even a little. 

By now, he’s used to the constancy of his low-grade arousal. The tingling, warm feeling is with him all day, all night. It’s intensified every time he hears Cal’s name, or catches a glimpse of his face, or thinks of his face, his body, which is almost always. He hasn’t touched himself. It’s become a quiet game of sorts, one he plays alone. He lets the sensation rush through him, accepting it for what it is, but he doesn’t touch. Not really. 

It helps his art, wanting something so badly. And David has nothing but his art. 

He’s perusing his work, the paint glistening in the lamplight, when his door bangs open.

“David.”

It’s Cal. He’s flushed, cheeks red, and his eyes are bright. He stumbles slightly, not walking toward David exactly, but entering the room enough to shut the door behind him. 

“Cal,” David says. The name sounds heavy on his tongue. He’s not sure if he’s had the chance to address him by name before. He says it again, relishing the shape his lips make around it. “Cal?”

“I’m not interrupting, am I?” Cal asks, his hands wringing together. He’s breathless and shaking. His eyes roam over David’s naked torso, slowly. He licks his lips. “I just - ,” he stammers, hesitance copious in his cadence, “I’m gonna go.”

When Cal turns for the door, David catches his scent. It’s the usual olfactory brilliance that makes his heart race, but there’s something else. He tilts his head, eyes closed. 

“You’ve been drinking?” David asks. He only forms it as a question to be polite, but the evidence, now that he’s noticed it, is blaringly obvious. Cal’s drunk. And the guilty look on Cal’s face tells David that he’s not supposed to be. Before Cal can disappear through his door, David crosses the room and touches his shoulder. 

Cal jumps away from David’s hand, his back slamming against the closed door. He looks mortified, misty-eyed. His jaw works back and forth, his mouth slack. David can smell his feverish skin, and he clenches his teeth as the arousal shoots through him like little electrical shocks. He can feel his heartbeat in the base of his thickening cock. Luckily, Cal isn’t looking at David. In fact, he doesn’t seem to be looking at anything. His head is tilted down, his broad shoulders are slumped. The chain he wears around his neck has slipped loose from beneath the neck of his sweater, and David is hypnotized watching it dangle back and forth. 

They are silent, save for the ragged breaths Cal sporadically sucks in and the loud thumping of David’s heart. 

Then Cal wets his lips with the tip of his tongue, and speaks. “I didn’t want anyone to see me like this, but I didn’t want to be alone.” He braves a glance at David. His eyelashes are dark and shining with moisture. 

David ponders a response. He knows what he wants to say, what he wants to do. He cautions a small step toward Cal, wishing he had a shirt on. “You’re the only visitor I’ve had,” he says softly. “So you’ve,” he says, voice dropping deep, “come to the right place. To be alone.”

Cal sighs heavily, then flashes a row of white teeth in a brief, weak smile. “I can be alone with you,” he says, and it’s barely a whisper. Then, louder, he says, “I’m an alcoholic.” It’s a matter-of-fact admission. One David can appreciate. One he understands. He wants to reward one truth with another, but can’t think of anything to say. David’s truths are a secret. And the ones that aren’t secret are no longer relevant. “I shouldn’t have come here,” Cal continues. “I’m interrupting your…” He looks at the wall, sees the painted profile, the profile that’s so obviously his own, and closes his mouth. 

“You’re interrupting nothing,” David says, even more uncomfortable now that he’s been caught painting Cal’s face yet again. “I’m finished.”

Cal hums softly, stepping toward the wall. His fingers dart out and touch the still-wet paint. “It’s me.”

“Yes.”

“Why do you keep painting me?” he asks, his fingers dragging through his profile. It smears. His fingers come away yellow, matching the paint streaking across David’s chest. 

David wonders how to answer. He decides this is the truth he can reward. Especially when there’s a risk Cal is drunk enough he won’t remember. “I like to paint beautiful things.”

This makes Cal look over his shoulder. His cheeks are blushing scarlet, but his eyes are narrowed suspiciously. “Like doors and ladders?”

David feels himself smile. “It’s their light, and the promise of that light, that’s beautiful to me.”

A darkness sweeps over Cal’s face. “I don’t promise light.”

“You don’t have to promise,” David says. “I can see it.”

Cal proves his drunkenness when he turns on his heel and stumbles backward. His back is flush against the paint. “What does it look like?” he asks David, summoning him. 

David is pulled forward by invisible forces. He walks until his toes touch the tip of Cal’s shoes. “It’s the most beautiful thing in the world,” he breathes. “It’s bright,” he whispers, slowly lifting his hand. He’s so close to Cal’s face, he can finally see the intricacies of his eyes, the multi-tonal irises that shift their shade. He isn’t surprised to find specks of gold. When his fingers skim gently over Cal’s cheek, they both shudder. The touch burns between them. “It’s golden,” he says. Cal’s skin is smooth, soft, and hot. His fingers brush along the contour of his cheek and over his chin. 

“What does it feel like?” Cal asks with shaky breath. David’s fingers fan out across Cal’s throat, gently squeezing. 

“It feels like home,” David sighs, and he leans in, leans his forehead against Cal’s. He has no choice. He has to. Just like he has to keep dragging his fingers down. His thumb presses against the hollow of Cal’s throat, caresses over his collarbone, falls along his firm chest. 

“Does it feel good?” Cal pants. His breath is hot on David’s lips. 

David’s hand brushes over Cal’s abdomen, lamenting the layer of sweater between them. “Yes,” David answers. They’re both trembling. Breathing in and out in frenzied tandem. 

“Do you want to go home, David?” Cal asks, his eyes squeezing shut. 

“Yes,” David says. His palm presses down on Cal’s stomach, and he smoothes it lower, past the waistband of Cal’s pants. “And I want you to come with me.”

Cal shudders violently as David’s fingertips breach the elastic of his boxers. He claws at the wall behind him, his head falling forward to rest against David’s shoulder as the spasms wrench his entire body. He’s coming, David realizes, untouched. He extracts his hand from Cal’s pants and clutches his waist, holding him up while he rides out his orgasm. 

“Fuck,” Cal drawls haggardly. He breaks the spell between them, knocking away David’s hands. They both stagger from the wall. Cal’s back is covered in yellow paint, and it’s all David sees as the man runs from the room.


	6. Rung Six

David lies in bed, his eyes plastered to the Cal-smudged painting on his wall. The morning sunlight streams through his window. He doesn’t want to get up, doesn’t think he can. All he can do is replay the previous night’s oddities over and over: Cal rushing into his room, drunk; Cal pressed against his wall; Cal’s skin hot and trembling beneath his touch; Cal coming undone in his arms.

He exhales and slides a palm over his face. His jaw is stubbled. He wonders how Cal’s smooth cheek would feel, pressed against his. His stomach chides him. David’s hungry, but he can’t leave his room. Not yet. Not while his erection rages. He thinks of Cal, how he ejaculated in his pants after David had barely touched him. His fingers hadn’t even thought to touch his cock. He frowns. Had they? David had been outside himself, in such intimate proximity to Cal, suffocating in his glow, but he had only been innocently touching him.

His cock twitches. 

Maybe not so innocently. 

If Cal hadn’t…reacted the way he had, would David have slid his fingers further? Would he have wrapped his fingers around Cal? Would he have pumped him, slow and tight and…God, he’s hard. He sits up and combs his fingers through his hair. Before he knows it, he has one hand snaked down his own pants. 

So, of course, there’s a knock on his door.

David curses and jumps up abruptly from the bed. The mattress squeaks beneath his assault and he curses again. He tries to adjust his blatant, monstrous erection, but there’s no magic formula in hiding something like that, so he resolves to bundle a towel in front of his waist, like he’s about to hit the showers (which he should actually consider, cold, cold, cold) and pulls his door ajar, just enough to poke his head out.

It’s Carol, and she’s sporting her usual, gleaming smile. 

“Hello,” he murmurs, hoping she can read his mind that now is so not a good time for this, or anything.

“David,” she says, still smiling that smile. So many teeth. “I thought we could head over to service together.”

He tries not to grimace. He really does. “I don’t know,” he says, shifting the towel out of sight. It rubs against his hard-on and he definitely grimaces then. “I have to get cleaned up.”

Her eyes train down to his chest. He’s still topless, and she bats her eyelashes at him. This is new behavior, and it has David flustered. Carol’s never treated him this way before. She’s looking at him now, a little too openly. He stares back at her, hoping maybe she’ll pick up on his frustration and total lack of interest in going to service with her, but no. Carol just keeps smiling, keeps batting her lashes, and says in a near coo, “That’s okay. We have loads of time. I’ll meet you outside and we’ll walk over there together.”

Not what he’d had in mind, but he’ll take it. He returns her smile, though his is less toothy than her own, and agrees to see her soon. He’s thankful when he can close the door, all but collapsing against it. Before he knows it, he’s palming himself through his pants. It’s not a conscious act. He has little to no control. As he sighs with the friction, his eyes roll up in his head, and then down again, landing on the painting of Cal on his dresser. His knees buckle and he slips to the floor in a heap. Every muscle feels like it’s on fire. 

He huffs, irritated, and balls up both fists, bringing the guilty culprit to his mouth to bite. He won’t touch himself like this over Cal. All that will do is make the feeling he’s feeling even worse. 

David sits on the floor for a few minutes, eyes shut, evening his breath, and then he finally drags himself to his feet and shuffles to his bathroom. His face is bright red in the reflection of the mirror. His eyes are dark and glinting. His hair is a little damp and lank on his brow. He still has paint on his chest from the night before. He groans and splashes his face with ice cold water. Again and again. Not good enough. He turns his shower on, as cold as it will go, and gets in. He keeps his hands busy with shampoo scrubbing and doesn’t even attempt to wash his groin area. It’s too risky. 

By the time he heads outside, he’s clean enough, and only mildly aroused. He chose a bulky sweater and loose jeans as his armor, and his hair is still slightly wet, but the chill doesn’t bother him. It’s good for him. He fills his lungs with a big, icy inhale, and tries to make his smile at Carol look genuine. She must accept it as such because she links her elbow with his and they begin walking in an amiable fashion toward the…church? David isn’t sure what the building is called the services take place in, but that’s where they're headed. A lot of people are out on the street, as well. David says hello to some friendly faces, feeling a bit bad he hasn’t bothered to memorize anyone’s name. They all seem to know his though, and he wonders if there’s a bulletin board kept somewhere in the compound with a list of names and faces, of all the Lucky Rescues the Meyerists have saved that month. Whatever it is, he wears a permanently plastered smile to his face by the time Carol leads him into the building. They take their seats toward the front row, as usual, and David sits quietly with his hands in his lap, waiting for the moment that has become so blessed for him, the moment when Cal emerges from the side door and sweeps onto the stage in a whirl of charisma. He wonders if Cal will look at him while he speaks, if he’ll try to meet his eye, if he’ll show any recognition of the night before. Cal was drunk, true, but will he have forgotten completely what had transpired between them? Did David want him to forget?

The room finally settles down and the side door creaks open. David’s holding his breath. 

The pretty, freckle-faced woman appears, smiling and Not Cal, and she makes her way up to the stage, her boots clopping obnoxiously on the wooden planks. 

“Good morning, everyone,” she says, and everyone says ‘good morning back’, except for David, who glowers in his chair. “Cal was called away to Peru last night,” she informs them. “By Dr. Meyers himself, on important R10 business. So you’re stuck with me.” She laughs. Everyone laughs. David feels nauseous, but he sits in his seat and manages to make it through the service, even though he’s not listening. His mind is elsewhere. 

\--

He can’t wait to get out of there. But after he’s finally ‘out of there,’ he’s thrust into an arguably less intriguing situation. Carol has him by the elbow again, and they’re following a large crowd of Meyerists, trudging through the snow, until they’re all sorted inside the large cafeteria. Instantly, guitars are brought out, circles are formed, songs are sung.

David looks around, a little disturbed. He leans into Carol, whispering in her ear. “What’s today?”

She laughs and squeezes his shoulder. “Thursday,” she tells him, and she leads him to a large circle of people in the corner. There are some flower crowns on heads, which is an odd sight for the middle of winter, and they all seem to be hushing, as a man in plaid flannel stands up and sheepishly begins to speak. 

David finds out later his name is Eddie, but now he just sits and listens while he speaks about his life, and the events that brought him to the movement, and then, as David’s thoughts begin to wander and his eyes begin to search the cafeteria for the open bar he knows doesn’t exist, Cal’s name is uttered in reverent tones.

Eddie’s eyes are watering as he tells a story about Cal and suddenly David’s attention is blaring. He hears the story of Cal joining the movement when he was young, with his father. The father is mentioned in whispers, like he’s a secret no one speaks of, and maybe he is, because his presence is like an unwelcome ghost in the space between the circle. But David is fascinated by the story Eddie lays out before them. He realizes most of the others in the circle are newcomers, same as him. Their eyes are as hollow as their cheeks, and they’re silent and solemn-faced. Does he look like that to everyone? He feels like it. Or he does, he thinks, when Cal isn’t around to spur his molecules into a miraculous hustle. 

Cal. His father left the movement years and years ago. He hears snips of information from Carol and other Meyerists, gossiping as Eddie continues to talk. David is torn between listening to Eddie’s heartfelt speech about belonging and finding the light, and the tidbits learned from Carol and her friends. He halfheartedly lands on the gossip, if only because they’re talking so near him he can’t avoid hearing. Apparently, Cal’s father was a drunk. Drank himself to death. His mother’s a drunk too, and a wretch that only calls him up especially for favors, money, the like. Cal had just visited her the day before, they whisper. David inclines his head, making sure he heard correctly. 

David constructs the events in his mind. Cal had been called away to see his drunk, horrible mother, proceeded the get drunk himself, and then came directly to see David. He assumes he came straight to David, since, according to the rumor mill consisting of Carol and friends, no one has even seen him since he left to see her. Except for Sarah, of course. Freckles. And now he’s been called away again, this time to Peru, on important, top secret, top rung business. This is what they think and it’s what they’re saying, but David isn’t so sure. 

He wonders if Cal left for Peru strictly to get away from David. After what had happened last night, it isn’t the hardest idea to conceive. He is torn between a struggle of feeling both guilt and satisfaction. It’s satisfying to David, the idea that Cal was so perturbed, so effected by their meeting the night before, that he has had to leave the country. And he feels guilty, because what if David had misconstrued the moment? What if he’d been wrong and Cal hadn’t been as receptive to his touch as he’d seemed? Had David’s eyes been so full of Cal’s glow and scent and heartbeat that he’d ignored the obvious signs of distress? 

Carol nudges him, and he nods, not paying attention. He keeps thinking of Cal. Keeps seeing his expression. Keeps hearing his staggered breathing and feeling his feverish skin and touching the smooth skin of his cheek. No, David decides. His reaction had been genuine. Cal had wanted David to touch him. It had frightened him, so he’d left. David thinks leaving the country is a bit extreme, but he won’t blame Cal. He isn’t angry at him for running off, he’s frustrated. Because David wants to see him, wants to sit in his glow, wants to feel his heart scuttle uncomfortably in his chest when Cal draws near. 

Carol squeezes his thigh and he jumps, shooting her a look of disdain. He doesn’t appreciate this new development in Carol, preferred her as a sexless caregiver. But his attention is hers now nonetheless, and she directs it back to Eddie, who is rattling on, his eyes brimming with tears, talking about the ladder and finding the light, and other things that don’t make particular sense to David, but have him straining for clarity despite himself.

Can it be a coincidence? The ladder leading to the light, resonating so similarly within David’s consciousness to his door in the tunnel? He focuses on Eddie, trying to maintain an appearance of interest, but he’s not listening. He’s thinking. What if Meyerism has more substance than anyone knows? What if Dr. Meyers, their no-show leader, knows the truth? The same truth David knows? That there is another world, and a way to get there? David breathes deeply through his nose and his fingers twitch for a cigarette. 

They say that Dr. Meyers is bathed in light. Literally. David snorts, doubting it. But then, Cal has a glow. David can sense it. A new thought occurs to him. Does Cal know about the other world? He answers his own question quickly. No. Cal can’t know about the other world, David’s world, because he would be different if he knew. He would be lighter, happier. Brighter. David isn’t sure how he knows this, but he knows it absolutely. 

All this time, Eddie talks, guitars strum, and Carol whispers with her friends. David remains deep in his own thoughts. There’s something about Cal, something more to him than this surreal attraction David feels. And he is desperate to discover it. But now he has to wait. He wonders how long Cal will be in Peru.

 

Not long, apparently, because the very next morning, so early it’s still dark and will be for a while, as David is blowing a ring of smoke out his open window, he spots him, walking swiftly down the path. He’s not close enough to see clearly, and David squints. What he can make out of Cal’s face distresses him: bunched up brows, clenched jaw, nervous eyes, shoulders squared. He isn’t even wearing a coat and it’s freezing. David puts his cigarette out, pulls on a t-shirt, shrugs on his coat, and grabs the thick, cable knit sweater Carol had given him to wear. 

He rushes out his cabin door, and Cal is already several yards ahead. David pauses. Cal hasn’t heard him. He’s walking quickly, and David can tell, now that he’s a bit closer, that he’s walking strangely. Like he’s injured. This is the deciding factor for David, and before he can stop himself with inconsequential things like reason and privacy, he follows, as soft-footed as he can. 

David is stalking Cal through the snow. Cal doesn’t look behind him, just keeps staggering forward along the path. David tries to keep silent, but with the wind blowing noisily, he doesn’t fear being overheard. It isn’t long, five minutes or so, when he finally sees Cal winding down in his trek and darting for a semi-secluded cabin off a side path. His cabin, David speculates. He ducks behind a tree and watches as Cal stumbles up his front porch steps and unlocks his front door, dropping the keys twice before he manages it. He throws himself through his door and it closes it behind him with a bang. 

David creeps from around the tree and follows Cal’s footprints up to his cabin, but he ignores the front door, opting instead to swing around the side and find a window to peek through. He can’t explain why he’s doing what he’s doing, being horrible and invading Cal’s privacy, he only knows he must do it. Somehow, it feels important. Most of the windows are concealed by blinds, but David persists until he finds a bent blind that allows him to peer through to the scene inside.

What he sees makes him stagger and gasp, and David falls to his back in the snow.

Cal is crouched in his living room, on his hands and knees, covered in blood.


	7. Rung Seven

David kicks down the front door.

It’s not the first time David has seen such a display of violence, but the sight of Cal, his face luminous in the soft light of the living room lamps, blood on his hands, on his face…

“Cal?” he asks cautiously. Now that he’s inside the cabin, his greatest fear is dissolved. Cal isn’t hurt. It isn’t his own blood splattered across the deathly pale skin of his cheek. David gently shuts the front door and crosses the room, kneeling beside Cal, who is kneeling over a body. David doesn’t need to ask him what he’s done. It’s clear. He doesn’t need to ask if he’s alright. He clearly isn’t. So David reaches out and cups Cal’s cheek with his palm, urging Cal’s glance. The shaking man looks up at him with terror-huge eyes. 

David remembers his own despair when he had caused such destruction by his own hands. The paralyzing anxiety of it. The dehumanizing his brain had undergone when someone else’s blood had stained his skin. He knows now why he felt compelled to stalk Cal through the early morning darkness. He knows it now as he looks in Cal’s terrified eyes. Cal’s shaking beneath his palm, but his skin still feels hot, still burns the tips of David’s fingers. 

“Don’t worry,” David tells him. He lets his thumb trail lightly over the soft lobe of Cal’s ear. “I’ve got you.” David lifts him up, his arms wrapping around his waist, and he leads him from the gory mess on the living room floor into the bathroom and sits him at the edge of the tub. He finds a washcloth, folded neatly on the sink counter, and wets it with warm water. He puts it in Cal’s hand. “There’s some blood on your face,” he tells him, keeping his voice even and gentle. “Clean it off. Wash your hands.” David takes a deep breath. “Stay in here until I come back for you.”

Cal is staring blankly ahead. 

David gets on on one knee and lightly touches his shoulder. “Cal,” he says, and Cal’s eyes dart to his. Then he nods. He understands. Satisfied, David leaves him in the bathroom, closing the door. 

He slips off his jacket and lays it across the couch. He thinks for a moment, and then decides to take off his t-shirt too. Only then does he approach the dead man on the floor. He doesn’t recognize him. Doesn’t especially care who he is or why Cal killed him. He’s dead, and David’s only concern is removing his incriminating presence from Cal’s cabin. 

Luckily, this isn’t David’s first body he’s had to bury. 

He’s grateful for the cloak of night. It will make things easier. They still have hours and hours before the sun rises. It’ll have to be enough. But first, David has to get the body covered and ready for transport. He has to make the living room look less like a horror film set. He sets out for the kitchenette, finds industrial, black garbage bags. Perfect. Detouring only long enough to make sure the front door is locked, he begins. 

Dead weight is hard to maneuver, but this man hasn’t been dead long enough for his body to stiffen, so David, with some effort, is able to successfully stuff the head, down to the torso, into the first garbage bag. In the process, he sees where Cal stabbed him in the neck. That explains all the blood, if he managed to knick the jugular. It dazzles David for a moment. It’s how he’d killed…himself? His other self? Quick, horrible, messy. He hears a muffled sob from the bathroom and continues his chore, working faster now. He slides the lower half of the body into the second garbage bag. Wraps the middle with a third bag to keep them sealed. He examines the rug the body’s lying on. It’s too convenient, but he won’t argue the obvious solution and wastes no time in rolling the corpse up in the ruined carpet. 

If he could do the rest on his own, he would, but David knows how hard the next steps are, and how little time he has to complete them before daybreak, so he returns to the bathroom, knocking gently before cracking open the door. 

Cal is leaning against the sink. He’s removed his shirt, tossed it into the trash. His hands look mostly clean now, but he’s missed a speck of blood beneath his jaw. David wipes it away with his thumb, surprised when Cal doesn’t inch away from his touch. He wants to linger here, wants to let his touch glide languidly across Cal’s lip as it trembles, but there isn’t time for that, and it’s not what Cal needs. 

He drops his hand and turns the faucet o. Dipping his own bloodied hands beneath the flow of warm water, he’s able to scrub his skin clean. He checks his reflection briefly in the mirror. He’s been careful and his effort is evident in the lack of blood on his face. His chest sheens with sweat though, so he grabs the towel hanging over the shower rod and wipes himself down. Without asking for permission, he does the same to Cal. Cal is malleable in his arms, closing his eyes as David dries the errant drops of water on his stomach and across his throat. 

“Come,” David says, and he takes Cal’s hand. What’s more, Cal lets him.

They walk slowly back into the living room, where the only evidence left of trauma is the rolled up carpet by the door. 

“I need your help now, Cal,” David says, giving Cal’s hand a little squeeze. 

Cal nods mutely, so David directs him over to the carpet. “I’ll carry this end, you carry that end, and we’ll bring it out to your car.” David bites his lip. “Do you have a large trunk?”

 

He does have a large trunk, it turns out, and by the time they haul the carpet inside it, they’re both breathless. David leaves Cal leaning against the car while he runs back to the cabin. He grabs the sweater, his jacket, his t-shirt. He locks the door behind him when he exits. Cal is shivering, still bare chested and shocked, and David approaches him with the cable knit. Cal lifts his arm and allows David to pull the sweater down over his head. He tugs it on, smoothes it across his shoulders. Then he throws on his t-shirt and jacket and they get in the car. 

It’s still dark. Maybe twenty minutes have passed since David was smoking a cigarette in his own room. And even despite the horrific details of this sudden event, David wouldn’t wish to be anywhere else, doing anything else with anyone else. He feels useful and relevant. He can help Cal with this, he is helping Cal. He is protecting him. He turns the key in the ignition, makes sure Cal’s seatbelt is buckled, and pulls out of the driveway. 

The tires crunch on the snow as they roll down the road. The only noise in the car is the hum of the heater. Only when they’re reaching the gates of the compound does Cal find his voice, and it’s eerily calm and comfortingly collected, considering the circumstances. 

“Let me handle this,” Cal says as the man on guard stops them with a wave of his flashlight. 

David’s nerves are firing with dread and his hands are gripping the steering wheel fiercely, but Cal is all smiles and charm when he rolls his window down.

“Is that you, Cal?” the guard asks.

“Hey,” Cal greets him merrily. “Got some 10R business to tend to this morning. David here’s helping me out.”

The guard looks surprised, but not suspicious enough to stop someone as highly ranked as Cal from leaving the compound at three in the morning. He wishes them well and waves them through the gate. When they’re further down the road, a mile out of the compound, David looks searchingly at the man in his passenger seat, but Cal has gone back to his haunted silence. David leaves him be, letting him stare out the window, deep in thought.

\--

If it’s hard burying a body, it’s even harder burying a body when the ground is frozen and covered in snow. David’s muscles burn as he strikes at the impossible earth with his shovel. Right beside him, Cal does the same. They make some headway, but it’s a slow, painful process. By the time they’ve dug two feet into the ground, the sky is already lightening. The sun isn’t up, but it’s threateningly close. They won’t be able to finish this properly, David decides, so they’ll just have to finish it. 

He signals for Cal to set down his shovel, and they pull themselves out of the shallow grave. If Cal is wary of the depth of their hole, he doesn’t express his concern, and together they kick the body in its carpet until it thuds at the bottom of its grave. 

Now all that’s left is replacing the dirt. They accomplish that part much faster. And then, for appearance’s sake, they shovel the snow back onto the exposed earth, packing it tight over the resting place of Cal’s victim. 

They’re both filthy, caked in dirt and sweat, and David knows there’s no way they can return to the compound in such a state. On silent agreement, they both turn back to the car. The sunrise is looming on the horizon and David wants to get Cal to safety before the sunlight hits his face.

\--

The motel Cal points them in the direction of is cheap and isolated and David, being the less anxious of the two, rents a room easily, with what he hopes is minimal suspicion from the man at the front desk. 

There’s one bed, and David steers Cal toward it as soon as the door locks behind them. He keeps the lights off, settles Cal on the squeaky mattress and proceeds to untie his shoes for him. They’re coated in a layer of dirt. So are David’s. He’ll have to rinse them in the tub. He glances down at their clothes. Those will have to be cleaned, too. Once their clothes are rinsed and drying, they can tend to themselves, but first things first. 

David looks up at Cal through his silky fall of hair. He isn’t expecting such alertness from Cal at this point, but Cal’s watching him like a hawk. His breath is shallow. David watches his throat as it bobs on his swallow. 

“We need to strip clean, so I can wash our clothes,” David tells him. He tugs at Cal’s boot and it slides off easily. Cal puts up no audible resistance so David removes the second as well. In short order, he peels away Cal’s socks. He can’t help but notice how icy-cold Cal’s toes are and before he can reconsider, he closes a warm hand around each foot, letting the warmth of his palms heat Cal’s frozen skin. 

After a moment, he releases Cal’s feet and pauses, hesitant, wary. He glances up at Cal, the question in his eyes. Cal is still watching him. His jaw works back and forth, the way it does, and then he’s questing with his fingers for his pants button. David’s mouth is tensed as he observes Cal’s fingers deftly pulling at his zipper. Then, miraculously, Cal leans back on his elbows and lifts his hips. David is silent as he rises to his knees at the foot of the bed and leans across Cal’s lap to gently grasp the waist of his open trousers. 

He struggles to keep his breathing steady as he pulls, politely as he can, Cal’s pants from around his hips, down his thighs, around his ankles. He doesn’t fold the pants when they’re removed, but tosses them in a pile with the dirty socks. When he looks back to Cal, he’s already lifting his arms in the air, looking patiently at David. 

To continue undressing him. 

David stands in front of him and pulls off Cal’s heavy knit sweater, which is damp with sweat and filthy. He tosses it to the pile and turns away quickly. He can’t look at Cal when he’s sitting on a motel bed, stripped down to all but his underwear. He can’t. Not when he’s already straining obscenely in his jeans. It has been difficult enough, remaining in such close, intimate quarters with Cal the past few hours, but the adrenaline of his task kept his arousal at bay. Now that the task is majorly complete, now that David’s awareness is returning, the flood of sensations is beginning to fill him up. He toes off his own shoes, one by one, his back still to Cal on the bed. He doesn’t see, but hears, the elastic band of Cal’s boxer shorts as they’re eased off his body. Cal’s naked behind him, and David’s nose is bombarded with his scent. That clean, heady, bright smell. His blood is pumping impossibly fast. He feels heat at his back, like Cal’s glow is radiating and warming him. He is about to shrug off his t-shirt when he feels cold fingers brush against his hips, and then Cal is helping him, lifting the t-shirt over David’s head. David unbuttons his jeans as Cal steps around to face him. David tries, he really tries, not to stare at anything but Cal’s face, but even the sight of that makes his cock swell. 

There is no question that Cal sees it, because his eyes are staring directly at it. His fingers slip beneath the edge of David’s jeans and he yanks them down, expedient, mechanical. David’s underwear slips down with it. He steps out of them, and now they’re both completely naked. David’s eyes finally fall downward and the silent gasp he makes hurts his throat, but he can’t control it because Cal is just as hard as he is, if not more.

That’s why David is startled when Cal speaks, his voice unexpected and deep in the quiet space between them. 

“You know an awful lot about body disposal.”

It isn’t a sentence one expects to hear when naked and aroused with another man inches away, but David is overjoyed by the sound of Cal’s voice, and it couldn’t matter less what subject Cal wishes to discuss, only that he wishes to discuss it with David. 

“It’s not the first body I’ve buried,” David says. “Or the second.”

Cal nods. Swallows hard. He’s shivering, and David feels guilty for taking his clothes away only to leave him cold and exposed in a strange place. With a strange man. It’s hard to turn away from him when he’s so near, his magnet so alluring, but David does it, forces himself to turn away. He pulls the blanket off the bed and wraps it around Cal’s shoulders. Cal’s eyes shut and David finds it impossible to lift his hands. His fingers dig gently into the tense muscle and Cal is leaning, letting his weight fall into the strength of David’s hands. 

Is it possible he’s as touch starved as David? That Cal is as helpless in David’s presence as David is in Cal’s? He wants to touch his face again, to lead his palms down the curves of his naked body. He wants to make him come, not like before, but with his hands, with his mouth. He wants everything. He wants Cal. 

Another shiver wracks Cal’s body, and David squeezes his shoulders once more before letting go and stepping away. 

“I need to get our clothes clean,” David says. 

Cal’s eyes open and he blinks rapidly. He stares at David, blank-faced, and then nods, sits down on the bed, the blanket tucked snugly around his body. David indulges himself in watching him for a moment longer, then bends down to collect their pile of soiled clothes. He’s not positive, but it feels like Cal is staring at his backside as he walks into the bathroom.

\--

Rinsing the dirt from their clothes is painstaking, but David keeps at it diligently until he’s certain their cleanliness is passable. He scrubs at the shoes with a washcloth. In the end, he decides they’re just shoes, and aren’t shoes supposed to get dirty? With a tired sigh, he sets them aside. Before he returns to the room where Cal is waiting, David makes himself as decent as he can and wraps a towel around his waist. He scoops up the damp, clean clothes and walks past the bed to the radiator, which Cal has had the foresight to turn on high. David lays out their clothes to dry, then turns to Cal, who’s cuddled up in the blanket, his back pressed against the headboard. 

David is preparing to ask Cal if he’d like to use the shower first when Cal speaks. 

“What did you mean when you said you wanted to take me home with you?”

Once again, it’s not the words David expects. He sits on the edge of the bed, mindful of keeping his hands modestly crossed over his lap. He’s a little bit too cold and sore and miserable to be fully erect, but with Cal, it’s always a possibility. David shifts on the bed so he’s facing him. He’s surprised Cal remembers anything he’d said, honestly. He trails back in his memory, thinks of the exchange. His cock twitches in interest. He shakes his head and sighs. Why lie at this point? David looks into Cal’s eyes and all he wants to do is tell him the truth. 

“I meant what I said,” David answers. “I’d like to take you home with me.”

“Because I’m filled with light. Like your paintings,” says Cal. His voice is even, cool, but his eyes flash unmistakably. There’s desire in them. Fear. “Where are you from?” David opens his mouth to speak, but Cal interrupts. “Don’t say Germany.”

“I wasn’t going to say Germany,” responds David. He’s brimming with curiosity now, wondering what it is Cal’s hinting at. Does he know? He said before that he can see the light in David. But did he mean it in the same way David means it? “Where are you from, Cal?” David asks suddenly. The idle gossip Carol had provided was full of plot holes. And in all things concerning Cal, David wishes to know the facts, all of them.

“I don’t know,” Cal says.

“Don’t you?” counters David.

“I don’t remember much about my life before I joined the movement,” Cal expands. 

David accepts this with a nod. It’s what he was expecting to hear, and it makes his chest feel heavy and light all at once. Cal doesn’t remember his life before Dr. Meyers brought him here. Maybe because his life before the movement was spent elsewhere, somewhere similar, but different. 

Worlds different.

“We should shower,” David says after a long pause.

“I don’t think…” Cal begins, enunciating his words crisply, carefully, “…I can stand on my own for too long.”

David tries to keep his voice casual when he answers, “You’ll be fine.” Cal continues to stare at him and David can feel his heart skip a beat. “I’ll help you.”


	8. Rung Eight

David isn’t sure how he ended up here. A play by play of his life up until now zooms behind his eyes. There were never any hints, never any signs that he, David Andernach, would be stepping into a motel shower behind Cal Roberts. But here he is, reaching up with a washcloth to swipe soap softly across Cal’s shoulders. 

Cal is leaning against the shower wall, his forehead pressed against the tile. It’s true he probably couldn’t handle this on his own. David thinks of how weak he was when he’d woken in the medical cabin, how he’d barely been able to manage bathing on his own. Cal isn’t recovering from a stab wound, of course, but he’s been through an ordeal all the same. Even through the steam of the scouring water, David can tell that Cal’s shivering. He rubs circles over Cal’s back, entranced by the strong cords of muscle beneath his skin. 

He keeps his lower half as far away from Cal as he can without losing his balance. It feels a little awkward, bending this way, but not as awkward as it would feel if his cock brushed up against Cal’s backside on accident. Not to imply he would dislike the sensation. But now is a time for tending. Cal needs David to help him. David isn’t going to sour the moment by bombarding Cal with his incessant erection. 

But the heat of the bathroom carries Cal’s scent in its cloudy mist, and David closes his eyes and feels his head dipping forward, until his nose is pressed into the nook of Cal’s neck. Beneath him, Cal stiffens. David breathes in, out. He is about to move away, and then…

Cal leans against him. His head falls back to rest on David’s shoulder. David feels his throat tightening, his blood pounding. His hardness is pressed against Cal’s lower back, and it’s all he can do not to rut against him. 

The washcloth in his hand is trapped between their bodies, and David slips it out, smoothing it across Cal’s chest. Cal’s still trembling in his arms, but he’s pressing himself against David, and his head turns slightly to nuzzle beneath David’s chin. David holds the washcloth up to the water, lets it soak, and then brings it back to rub slowly down Cal’s stomach. He’s smooth, hairless, his body so different from David’s and so beautiful. The struggle of Cal’s breathing is obvious, and it grows more wanton, more obscene as David continues to scrub the washcloth over his skin, over his belly button, until his hand meets the beginning of a trail of dark, coarse hair. He pauses. Cal’s hand closes lightly over David’s wrist and pulls him down. 

David sighs hot and heavy against Cal’s neck when the washcloth reaches his groin. Cal shudders and David drops the pretense of the cloth. It falls to the floor of the tub with a wet splat and then he’s closing his hand around Cal’s shaft. Cal gasps and rocks forward slightly, but he doesn’t try to move away. David works him slowly with his hand, spreading the suds of soap over his velvety skin. He feels huge in his hand. David peeks over Cal’s shoulder to see and groans at the sight of Cal’s cock being pumped. He’s big. Thicker than David. 

His other hand slips around Cal’s waist and joins the other between his legs. He jerks him off with one hand while the other gently cups his balls, squeezes. Cal’s a mess. Panting, groaning, shaking against him. His head rolls wildly against David’s shoulder. The slap of skin is crude and brilliant and David lets his hips buck against Cal’s back, lets his own erection find a slick slide over Cal’s wet skin. They move together beneath the spray of the shower. 

It’s over too soon when a growl rumbles from Cal’s chest and David feels himself spill all over his back. A second later, Cal is collapsing against him, rocking into David’s fist until his release splatters the shower wall. David wants to crumble to the floor, but he remembers he’s the one who’s supposed to be holding up Cal, so he leans against the tiles, dragging Cal with him, still tucked into his arms and pressed against his chest. 

When Cal can catch his breath, he pulls out of David’s hold and steps away from him. He lifts his blushing face to the water, eyes shut. David touches his shoulder with careful fingers and Cal shrugs him off. Doesn’t say a word. David waits, staring at his back for a few painful minutes, and then secedes. Water drips everywhere when he steps from the shower, and he drapes himself in his towel. He waits for Cal, in case he needs him, and hands him a towel when he hears the water turn off.

Cal accepts it, wraps himself up, and steps out. He won’t look at David. David tries not to feel too upset while they wait soundlessly for their clothes to finish drying.

\--

The only silence more devastating than the one that accompanies their clothes drying is the one that infiltrates their drive back to the compound. David drives. Cal gazes out the window. Neither will speak, even though every urge in David’s body is screaming at him. He wants to reach out and take Cal’s hand, tell him it’s okay, soothe him, but whatever thaw Cal had undergone in the early morning is finished, and the man sitting beside David in the car is ice cold. Untouchable. Unreachable.

He won’t regret what transpired between them in the motel, because the memory of it is too sweet and too fresh in David’s memory. What he will do is respect the distance Cal obviously wants to maintain, despite his own dislike of it. At least for now. But David knows Cal’s secret. He knows who he is beneath the tight smile and calm voice, and he will strive to meet that person again and again.

By the time they’re waved back through the compound, daybreak is hours behind them, and evening is already settling in, making the rows of cabins seem cozier than they have any right to appear. David offers Cal his bed when they park outside his cabin, with the reasoning that Cal might not want to spend the night in the place he’d so recently taken a life, but Cal brushes him off with a sigh and that fake smile and he quickly exits the car before David can try and convince him otherwise. 

He watches him disappear into his cabin, but doesn’t linger long after. Instead, he shrugs on his coat, which is still marginally damp from its wash, and he begins to make his own tired path through the snow to his room, where he is very much looking forward to collapsing onto his bed and sleeping forever.

\--

He doesn’t expect for Cal to actively seek him out, considering how he reacted the last time they’d shared such vivid intimacy, but he isn’t prepared for the utter abandonment he experiences when, in the days following their graveside date, Cal refuses to even look at him. 

David attends services, always sitting himself front and center, and he waits for Cal to glance in his direction as he speaks, but it never happens. He looks everywhere but at David. He lingers after services, too, when hugs and handshakes are prevalent all around, but Cal vanishes in the crowd before David can reach him. 

When David isn’t at service, he walks the paths around the compound. He is almost constantly walking the paths, waiting to run into Cal. He never does. 

He strains his ears for idle gossip, and more serious undertones, and catches a few pieces of interest. Someone from Peru, a 10R, is missing. Eddie’s gone on some sort of walkabout. A hawk is dropping out of school? David doesn’t understand most of these things, which is fine, because he doesn’t care about them. He hears a few things about Cal, but it’s mostly commentary from Carol and her friends about superficialities, like his handsomeness, his capabilities of charisma. David purses his lips when he hears. They don’t understand Cal, how he’s so much more than The Face. They can’t see his glow or feel his persistent pull. Even when David is sitting in his little room, cleaning his brushes by the open window, he feels the tug in the pit of his stomach. 

 

If the passing days do nothing to subside the disturbance within David, they do prove to bring an unexpected shift in the weather. David first notices it when he has to take his sweater off during one of his walks. The snow, he notices, is beginning to melt. And once the process begins, it is rapid. 

He’s happy in the beginning of this seemingly innocent seasonal change. It’s been cold for so long. David hopes, in an unusual burst of optimism, that the thawing of the snow might bring a thawing of hearts. Cal can’t avoid him forever, and an outside change such as the one occurring beyond his window right now, might accompany the inner change David’s been waiting for in Cal.

 

David is painting the wall above his window one afternoon, enjoying his cigarette, the warm breeze, and the eye he’s creating before him. Deep blue with flecks of gold. The compound has been busy today with children running around excitedly in the warming air, and the adults taking long, lovely strolls, talking about the additions to the gardens this year. David thinks it’s a beautiful day. The sky is crystal clear and blue. He peers out the window and catches his first glance of green grass stretching its blades to the sun. 

Sometimes, David will realize later, life presents you with a vision of peace and perfection, only to provide absolute contrast for a subsequent event. How can a catastrophe be appreciated in full if not preceded by serenity? 

David is curling a delicate black eyelash with the tip of his brush when the end is set into motion. 

First, he sees Cal walking down the path. David presses his open palm to the glass of the window and drinks in the sight of him, which has been a barren occurrence in the past weeks. Next, he notices the flank of men on either side of Cal. Their hands are clenched around his arms. They’re leading him. He squints, reads the expression on Cal’s face. His color is pale. His forehead glistens with perspiration. He is tense of body. It’s evident in every step he’s forced to make. David drops his paintbrush and rushes out the front door of his cabin in time to see the men manhandling Cal into a building at the end of the road. 

“Cal!” he yells. 

His voice carries, echoes through the compound, and Cal hears him, turning his head to meet his gaze just as the door slams shut, sealing them away from each other. David takes off down the path, past a small blonde child. He runs until he’s breathless, panting outside the building where they’ve taken Cal. A blue butterfly flutters past his face, and David watches it, wide-eyed. 

“David,” someone says behind him. 

David whips around and sees the woman with freckles watching him. Her cheeks gleam with moisture. She’s been crying, but she isn’t anymore. Her eyebrows are cruel, straight lines. 

“What’s going on?” David asks her, the pitch of his voice rumbling low. 

“That’s top rung business,” she says. 

David doesn’t waste time on her, but pushes past. He stomps back down the road. All around him he hears the murmuring begin. Carol is sitting on the porch outside the medic cabin. He walks up to her and lights a cigarette. She looks at him with a frown. 

“What’s going on?” he asks her. 

She rubs her hands over her bohemian-skirted knees and sighs. “They found Silas’ body in the woods.”

David’s heart stops.

“They think Cal…killed him,” she says. “They’ve taken him into holding until the higher rungs get here.” She hangs her head, shakes it back and forth in awe. “I can’t believe it.”

David believes it. But he won’t stand for it. He settles his cigarette between his teeth and continues down the path to his cabin. He slams open his front door, makes for his room. He looks around for what he’ll need and decides there’s nothing here for him. He considers his brushes for a mere instant and decides against it. He won’t need them. He pays a final glance for the images on his wall. The door. The ladder. Cal’s profile. He picks the portrait up, feels the weight of it in his hands, then sits it back down, grabs his coat, and takes off.

He finds more of what he’ll need in Cal’s cabin, which he ransacks. There are some Meyerists gathered out front, but he breezes right past them, has no care for them or what they might be thinking. Within Cal’s living space, he permits himself a gathering pause. He can smell Cal’s presence all through the cabin, and it gives David the resolve he needs. In the bedroom, in the closet, he finds a backpack. He stuffs it full of Cal’s clothes. He heads to the kitchenette next, tosses in some water bottles. The butcher block is sitting on the counter, waiting for him. David’s fingers skim over the handles of several options before settling on one of the blades. It’s the smallest, a paring knife. But it’s also the sharpest. He tucks it into the waist of his jeans.

The car keys are on a hook by the door and he sweeps them up in his hand as he leaves the cabin. He earns some strange looks when he hops into Cal’s car and revs the engine, but by the time anyone thinks to ask him what he’s doing, he’s already making his way down the road. 

The crowd outside has grown while David made his preparations, but he ignores them, putting the car into park directly outside the holding building. He slams the car door shut and pushes through the gathering until he reaches the building’s front door. He knocks. When no one answers, he hesitates for a second and then opens it himself. He hears someone calling his name behind him, someone telling him to stop, but he pays no mind. 

He’s inside the building now and the walls are white blocks of cement. There’s a long hallway of cells. At the end of the hall is a guard, speaking with the freckled woman. They spot him and exchange worried looks. 

“You can’t be here right now,” the guard is saying, but David is walking toward them, barreling forward. His hand grips the knife handle in his pocket. 

“David,” the woman says, holding out her hands.

He reaches her first, pushing her up against the cell door she’s blocking. She gasps as her head slams up against the surface. 

“Let him go,” David demands. He’s so angry his vision is blurring at the edges. He’s never felt this way. Exhilarated. Extreme. “Let him go!” he repeats, screaming in her face. 

The guard knocks into David, pushing him away from the woman, and David stumbles back. The woman is running down the hallway, and David knows he’s running out of time. The guard is fumbling with his handcuffs. David’s eyes narrow. The guard is taking up his time. 

He leaps at him, his knife gripped tight. The guard falls swiftly at his feet seconds later, blood puddling rapidly beneath his head. David kneels down, fishes through his pocket, follows the jangle of sound until he finds the keys. 

 

When he bursts through the cell door, Cal is standing right there, right in front of him. David grabs his hand and yanks him over the threshold. Cal stumbles over the guard’s body and stares in disbelief at David, but he says nothing, lets himself be dragged down the hall. 

David stops them before they go through the door and turns to Cal. He thinks of saying something, anything, but everything sounds too simple in his head, so he runs his fingers down Cal’s cheek instead. He imagines Cal is soaked in light. David closes his eyes for a moment and he can feel the heat radiating through him. It’s Cal who grips David’s hand, urging him to open his eyes. They pass a moment together. And then David pushes open the door.

The two of them burst through, and David throws his weight into the crowd, clearing a path. In one hand he holds Cal’s, in the other is the knife, lifted in threat, shining with the blood of the downed guard. Someone grabs Cal, knocks him to the ground, and David is on them in an instant. More blood is spent, and Cal’s white sweater is stained, but David heaves him up, gathering him protectively in the crook of his arm, and he waves his knife in front of them until they reach the car. He’s mindful not to hurt him as he throws Cal into the backseat.

Someone hits him from behind, but his adrenaline is pumping, and David can’t slow down, he can’t stop. He bucks backwards, throwing the assailant from his back. He sweeps around with his blade extended and catches cloth beneath the knife. He doesn’t look to see who has taken the razor edge of his wrath. He’s already in the driver’s seat, turning the ignition. For their hospitality, David grants the Meyerists a warning honk, two, before he presses down hard on the gas, and they’re zipping through the crowd, down the road, straight for the gate.

David plows through it, and the car rattles, knocking his teeth, but the car isn’t too damaged. He turns his head to check on Cal, who’s sitting up now, the whites of his eyes brilliant with shock. 

They don’t speak. They don’t need to right now. All they need to do is keep driving.


	9. Rung Nine

David drives.

The longer he drives without being stopped, the easier it is to feel like their escape has been a success. An hour ago, when the sun was beginning to set, Cal had climbed into the passenger seat. David is smoking a cigarette now, one Cal has lit for him, and he smokes it gratefully. The windows are rolled down all the way and the wind smells fresh and promising. 

Cal switches on the radio and The Hollies sing them into nightfall. 

The stars are bright and David looks up at them appreciatively as they walk from the car to the motel room they’ve booked for the night. They’re miles and miles away from the compound. David isn’t so ignorant he doesn’t think they’re being followed, but he thinks they’ll be safe here for now. Regardless, they need to rest. Cal is all anxious energy and static at David’s side as he turns the handle of the motel room. Once they’re inside, Cal beelines for the bathroom. 

David chain locks the door and pushes a chair in front of it. He pulls the curtains closed and waits for Cal to emerge from the bathroom. When he doesn’t, David feels a new rustle of worry in his chest. He knocks tentatively on the door. No answer. 

“Cal?”

Nothing.

“Cal?”

Nothing.

David takes a step back. Kicks open the door. 

Cal is curled into the corner of the empty tub, his knees drawn up tight against his chest. David rushes to his side, jumping into the tub to reach him, and that’s when he spots the flask in Cal’s hand. He grabs it and throws it aside. To his relief, the whiskey begins to spill from its mouth. If Cal has had any, it hasn’t been much. 

A million questions form in David’s head, but when he turns to Cal to form one, he stops. Cal is rocking himself back and forth and his eyes are staring straight ahead, at nothing. David settles himself beside Cal. The ceramic of the tub is cold, but Cal’s body is hot beside him. He settles his arm over Cal’s shoulder, and closes his eyes on a sigh when he feels the man leaning into him. 

He holds him until his stomach rumbles loudly. Or is it Cal’s stomach? He’s about to ask him what he’d like to eat when he hears a loud knock on their door.

Cal’s eyes find David’s right away, and they stare at one another, white faced. 

It’s Cal who moves first, and David takes his hand, lets himself be pulled to his feet. They approach the door together, cautiously. They wait for another knock. It doesn’t come. 

BAM!

The door flies open and two men amble through. Their arms are raised. Steel shines in their hands. They have guns and they’re aiming right for David. 

Cal throws himself against the first man, slamming him up against the wall with a violent thud. David follows his lead and rams into the second intruder. He reaches for the knife in his pocket and jabs blindly for the hand holding the gun. 

Across the room, Cal is struggling. David can hear his winded breath, can hear the smacking of skin on skin. He has to get to him, protect him, but the man has moved on top of him, and he brings the blunt edge of his gun down. David’s head snaps to the side with the force of the blow and his temple bleeds. His eyes flutter. He feels hands around his throat. He can’t breathe. He paws desperately at strong fingers, fingers forcing the oxygen from his lungs. His thoughts are losing their color; the focus is draining from his eyes. 

The fingers clench at his neck and then release. David gasps, turning to his side, his hands up around his throat, which is tender and raw beneath his touch. There’s blood dripping on the carpet beneath him, where his head wound has been pressed to the floor. But above him, breathing hard, bringing his hands down to gently frame David’s face is Cal. 

The Face bends low above him, and David can see the bruise forming around his eye. His hands slide beneath David’s shoulders and he pulls him up, leans him against the end of the bed. David’s vision begins to straighten and he looks past Cal to the bodies on the floor. They’re dead. But that’s not what has David recoiling. He stands, before he should, but Cal is there to catch him when he starts to tumble to his knees. 

“David?” Cal asks. He’s gripping David close. His knuckles are bloody. 

David’s heart pounds electric as he focuses on the faces of the men on the floor. 

“I know these men,” he whispers. 

David’s first thought, when they burst into the room, had been of the Meyerists. He assumed the assault was from the compound. Men sent to bring Cal back for his punishment. But now, now he knows that’s not true. These dead men are not from the compound. 

They aren’t even from this world.

“Who are they?” Cal is asking, his hands gently guiding David to sit on the bed. 

David looks at Cal. Cal, who is leaning close, his face brimming with concern, his cheeks blushing red. Cal, who is glowing so bright and doesn’t even realize.

“They’re from the other side, Cal.”

Cal nods slowly and waits for more. David tells him more. He tells him everything. 

He watches Cal’s pupils dilate, watches him chew at his lower lip as his story unfolds. David tells Cal about Leonie. Her death. Maja leaving him. His despair in the aftermath, followed by the discovery of the door in the tunnel. His joy at seeing his daughter alive, his confusion when he’d seen his own double. He pauses to collect himself. Cal sits patiently, waiting. David explains as best he can, the moments leading up to the murder. The burial. The slow discovery of how wrong it all was. 

Is. 

He speaks of his journey to New York, how he’d found himself on the streets. When he reaches the part of his tale when Cal appears, the blizzard rushing around them, Cal sits perfectly still. After he divulges the parallel between his door and Cal’s ladder, he stops and assesses the man beside him. 

Cal’s eyes are glistening. David waits for the reaction. The refusal to believe, the exclamation of how impossible it all is, the assertion that David is a liar, delusional, sick.

“The light,” Cal whispers with wavering words. “It’s real.”

David’s fingers itch to touch, and he reaches out, his hand falling gently across Cal’s knee. “It’s real in the sense that it leads to the other side.” It hits him, the conclusion of his epiphany, and David’s lips part in stunned discovery. “I think,” he begins slowly, “that you and I are from the same place.”

Cal moves quickly, his hands pulling fistfuls of hair as he sinks into David’s lap. He straddles him over the bed and pushes him down. Only then, when David is pinned beneath, does Cal kiss him.

David moans helplessly against Cal’s lips as he presses them hard against his. His hands wrap around Cal’s waist, and he pulls him lower, spreading his legs so Cal can rest between. Cal’s tongue parts his lips and deepens their kiss. He’s strong and heavy and beautiful, and David clamors desperately for Cal’s trouser buttons. They’re there, unclasping beneath David’s fingers and he glides the zipper down and reaches his hand beneath the band of boxers until Cal is hot and hard in his palm. 

Cal breaks away from their kiss with a happy whimper and David murmurs his name, over and over. “Cal, Cal, oh, Cal,” until he can’t speak. He can’t stand to. It takes all of him just to breathe. And when Cal hurriedly tugs at David’s jeans, a white light prickles at the corners of David’s vision and his hips push up as Cal’s push down.

They rub against each other, their heat mingling, and Cal’s scent is holy. David buries his nose into his neck and sighs against his skin, exultant. He wonders how he has lived so long without Cal’s body on top of his own. And when sweet, rough fingers slip between his lips, David sucks them gratefully, tongue licking and tasting. 

The fingers expelled from his mouth, Cal lowers his lips to replace them with wet, desperate kisses, bruising their mouths between them as his hand slips between David’s parted thighs. His sopping fingers trace around David, pressing needily against previously untouched skin. Cal pulls away, lifting up on an elbow, posing the question to David with an imploring arch of his brow, and David’s voice is raspy and alien when he answers “yes, please, yes” and grabs Cal’s face. He rubs his stubbly cheek against Cal’s smooth, and gasps happily at the surge of stretch as Cal carefully probes in a finger. 

It stings, and David is delirious with need for more. He begs with the panting of his breath and the canting of his hips and the fingernails raking down Cal’s back, still covered in the blood-stained sweater neither of them have the mind to remove. This can’t wait. They’ve waited long enough. 

The second finger has David nipping at Cal’s neck. The stretch is drier than it should be, and Cal wets his fingers with his mouth and returns them hastily. He slides them in and spreads gently, moving them in a scissoring motion that has David feeling wonderfully, strangely open in a way he’s never been before.

The fullness is everything, and it isn’t enough, for either of the men writhing on the motel mattress. Time stills until the moment Cal spits into his palm and slicks himself, an act that should be vulgar, but to David, is nothing short of divine intervention. He forces his eyes open and lifts his head, and watches the moment Cal’s purpled, throbbing cockhead sinks inside. 

David’s head falls back and he pushes his legs farther apart. His fingers grip Cal’s ass and pull him deeper. They don’t kiss yet. They can’t. Cal thrusts gently. Short, calculated waves of sensation until they are flush together. Nothing but the sound of heavy breathing between them as Cal gives David time to adjust. 

But David doesn’t want to adjust, doesn’t want to wait. He wants it, needs it, all of it, right now. He whispers in Cal’s ear. “Please.” Cal shivers, nuzzles against David’s neck, and thrusts. All the way out, all the way in. A press against David’s prostate sends him crying into Cal’s shoulder, and then he’s moving in earnest, they both are. Rocking together, synchronized, whole. The wrongness that has permeated through David’s bones all this time is dead, and he can feel himself glowing, matching Cal in light as he matches him in thrusts. He pushes down hard on Cal’s cock, squeezing tight. Their rhythm persists wonderfully longer than David thought possible, and David is so close to the edge he can’t think, can barely breathe. He stares up at Cal as he moves on top of him, and he lifts his hand to stroke The Face with his fingers. 

Cal’s hands cup behind David’s neck and he kisses him fiercely, and his hips push him deep and he grows still. David feels him coming, filling him, and the throbbing feeling demands his own release. It’s sticky hot between them, and Cal’s sweater is doubly ruined. Suddenly, a laugh erupts from deep in David’s chest and he can’t stop. He laughs and laughs, his body shaking, and Cal wipes away a tear that’s streaked across David’s cheek. He kisses his jaw and holds David until he finally calms down, and his laughter fades.

Cal stays buried inside until he grows soft and slips free. He rolls to his side and welcomes David against his chest, wrapping him up in his arms. They lie together until their breathing is steady, and David wishes they could close their eyes and fall asleep.

But then he remembers the dead bodies on the floor of their motel room and groans. 

“What?” Cal asks, sounding equally sleepy as his voice vibrates pleasantly against David’s skin. 

David delicately reminds Cal of the corpses, bracing himself for an unseemly reaction. Cal shakes behind him, and it takes David a second to realize. 

He’s laughing.


	10. Rung Ten: An Epilogue

Peru is warm, and David wipes the sweat off his forehead with the bottom of his t-shirt. They’ve been travelling for hours, and he wonders if they’ll ever reach the top. 

Beside him, enjoying a drink of water from his canteen, is Cal. He catches David looking and smiles. He passes over the water, but only after making David kiss him soundly against the cliff face. 

They are walking a winding path up the mountain. Since they arrived here, Cal has had a daydreaming, soft look on his face, calming his features. He is lovely. 

He tells David he remembers this mountain, remembers this path. As they climb higher, more of his memory returns to him. His past begins to collect, the little fragments gathering together, making sense in ways they never have. 

They camp at night, and David builds a fire. The stars are shining and Cal keeps his eyes set on the brightest one, his head leaned back on David’s shoulder. He tells David he remembers Dr. Meyers taking him away. Bringing him here. How nothing was ever the same. Even his parents were different. And now he knows why. This was never his world. He was taken from his world. David kisses him. They should reach the ladder tomorrow.

\--

They aren’t far now. The sun is blazing, but the couple is beyond the discomforts of this world. 

It’s just ahead. Cal points to it, smiling, and David squeezes his hand. On the mountain path, near the promontory, is a natural ladder, made of stone and leading high into the sky. David lifts his head, but he can’t see the top. All he sees is the bright, bright sun, casting down its light. Cal is glowing, and his eyes are shining with excitement. 

David tightens the straps of the backpack over his shoulders. He spins Cal around to face him and touches his face. Cal leans in, kisses his cheek, his lips. Then he turns and places his hands on the first rung of the ladder. When it doesn’t burn him, he laughs, and the sound echoes off the mountain side. David boosts him up, helps him find his footing further up the rungs, and then he follows.

They climb together. It’s far, and they’re slow, exhausted. But when David glances up, he can see Cal above him, and it looks as though his body is disappearing into the light. 

David takes a deep breath and keeps climbing, until everything is a wash of gold.


End file.
